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THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



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THE 
FRIENDLY ROAD 

New Adventures in Contentment 
By 

DAVID GRAYSON,, j^c^. 

Author of "Adventures in Contentment," 
"Adventures in Friendship" 




Illustrated by 
THOMAS FOGARTY 



Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1913 



^f^ ^^ 



,h 



54 



Copyright, 1913, hy 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 

COPYRIGHT, 191 2, 1913, THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANV 



^. 



©GU357oll 






J^^\ 




A WORD TO HIM WHO OPENS 
THIS BOOK 

I did not plan when I began writing these 
chapters to make an entire book, but only to put 
down the more or less unusual impressions, the 
events and adventures, of certain quiet pilgrimages 
in country roads. But when I had written down 
all of these things, I found I had material in plenty. 

"What shall I call it now that I have written 
it?" I asked myself. 

At first I thought I should call it "Adventures 
on the Road," or "The Country Road," or some- 
thing equally simple, for I would not have the 
title arouse any appetite which the book itself 
could not satisfy. One pleasant evening I was 
sitting on my porch with my dog sleeping near 
me, and Harriet not far away rocking and sewing, 
and as I looked out across the quiet fields I could 



vi A WORD 

see in the distance a curving bit of the town road. 
I could see the valley below it and the green hill 
beyond, and my mind went out swiftly along 
the country road which I had so recently travelled 
on foot, and I thought with deep satisfaction of all 
the people I had met on my pilgrimages — the 
Country Minister with his problems, the buoyant 
Stanleys, Bill Hahn the Socialist, the Vedders in 
their garden, the Brush Peddler. I thought of the 
Wonderful City, and of how for a time I had been 
caught up into its life. I thought of the men I 
met at the livery stable, especially Healy, the wit, 
and of that strange Girl of the Street. And it 
was good to think of them all living around me, 
not so very far away, connected with me through 
darkness and space by a certain mysterious human 
cord. Most of all I love that which I cannot 
see beyond the hill. 

"Harriet, " I said aloud, "it grows more wonder- 
ful every year how full the world is of friendly 
people!" 

So I got up quickly and came in here to my 
room, and taking a fresh sheet of paper I wrote 
down the title of my new book: 

"The Friendly Road." 

I invite you to travel with me upon this friendly 
road. You may find, as I did, something which 



A WORD vii 

will cause you for a time to forget yourself Into 
contentment. But if you chance to be a truly 
serious person, put down my book. Let nothing 
stay your hurried steps, nor keep you from your 
way. 

As for those of us who remain, we will loiter as 
much as ever we please. We'll take toll of these 
spring days, we'll stop wherever evening overtakes 
us, we'll eat the food of hospitality — and make 
friends for life! 

David Grayson. 



CONTENTS 



Preface 


V 


CHAPTER 






I. 


I Leave My Farm 


3 


II. 


I Whistle 


33 


III. 


The House by the Side of the 






Road 


57 


IV. 


I Am the Spectator of a Mighty 
Battle, in which Christian 






Meets Apollyon 


83 


V. 


I Play the Part of a Spectacle 






Peddler 


"5 


VI. 


An Experiment in Human Na- 






ture 


143 


VII. 


The Undiscovered Country 


175 


VIII. 


The Hedge 


199 


IX. 


The Man Possessed 


227 


X. 


I Am Caught Up Into Life 


259 


XI. 


I Come to Grapple with the 






City 


289 


XII. 


The Return 


321 




ILLUSTRATIONS 

" ' Surely it is good to be alive at a time 

like this!'". . . . Frontispiece i^ 

FACING PAGE 

" ' I will stop here,' I said to myself" . 20 

" I usually prefer the little roads, the 
little, unexpected, curving, leisurely 
country roads " 118 

" ' I'll fight 'em, I'll show 'em yet!' " . 212 

" ' So you are the man who puts up the 

signs?'" 234 '^ 

"A huge, rough-looking man . . . 
stood at the centre of an animated 
group " 280 ' 

" We were walking along slowly, side by 

side" 316^ 

" From within I heard the rattling of 

milk in a pail" 336' 



I LEAVE MY FARM 





CHAPTER I 
I LEAVE MY FARM 



"Is it SO small a thing 

To have enjoyed the sun, 

To have lived light in spring?'* 

IT IS eight o'clock of a sunny spring morn- 
ing. I have been on the road for almost 
three hours. At five I left the town of Holt, 
before six I had crossed the railroad at a place 
called Martin's Landing, and an hour ago, at 
seven, I could see in the distance the spires of 
Nortontown. And all the morning as I came 
tramping along the fine country roads with my 
pack-strap resting warmly on my shoulder, 
and a song in my throat— just nameless words 
to a nameless tune — and all the birds singing, 

3 



4 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

and all the brooks bright under their little 
bridges, I knew that I must soon step aside 
and put down, if I could, some faint impres- 
sion of the feeling of this time and place. I 
cannot hope to convey any adequate sense of 
it all — of the feeling of lightness, strength, 
clearness, I have as I sit here under this maple 
tree — but I am going to write as long as ever 
I am happy at it, and when I am no longer 
happy at it, why, here at my very hand lies 
the pleasant country road, stretching away 
toward newer hills and richer scenes. 

Until to-day I have not really been quite 
clear in my own mind as to the step I have 
taken. My sober friend, have you ever tried 
to do anything that the world at large con- 
siders not quite sensible, not quite sane? 
Try it! It is easier to commit a thundering 
crime. A friend of mine delights in walking 
to town bareheaded, and I fully believe the 
neighbourhood is more disquieted thereby 
than it would be if my friend came home 
drunken or failed to pay his debts. 

Here I am then, a farmer, forty miles from 
home in planting time, taking his ease under 
a maple tree and writing in a little book held 
on his knee! Is not that the height of absurd- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 5 

ity? Of all my friends the Scotch Preacher 
was the only one who seemed to understand 
why it was that I must go away for a time. 
Oh, I am a sinful and revolutionary person! 

When I left home last week, if you could 
have had a truthful picture of me — for is 
there not a photography so delicate that it 
will catch the dim thought-shapes which 
attend upon our lives? — if you could have 
had such a truthful picture of me, you would 
have seen, besides a farmer named Grayson 
with a gray bag hanging from his shoulder, a 
strange company following close upon his 
steps. Among this crew you would have 
made out easily: 

Two fine cows. 

Four Berkshire pigs. 

One team of gray horses, the old mare a little 
lame in her right foreleg. 

About fifty hens, jour cockerels, and a number 
of ducks and geese. 

More than this — I shall offer no explana- 
tion in these writings of any miracles that may 
appear — you would have seen an entirely 
respectable old farmhouse bumping and hob- 
bling along as best it might in the rear. And 
in the doorway, Harriet Grayson, in her 



6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

immaculate white apron, with the veritable 
look in her eyes which she wears when I am 
not comporting myself with quite the proper 
decorum. 

Oh, they would not let me go! How they 
all followed clamoring after me. My 
thoughts coursed backward faster than ever 
I could run away. If you could have heard 
that motley crew of the barnyard as I did — 
the hens all cackling, the ducks quacking, the 
pigs grunting, and the old mare neighing and 
stamping, you would have thought it a 
miracle that I escaped at all. 

So often we think in a superior and lordly 
manner of our possessions, when, as a matter 
of fact, we do not really possess them, they 
possess us. For ten years I have been the 
humble servant, attending upon the com- 
monest daily needs of sundry hens, ducks, 
geese, pigs, bees, and of a fussy and exacting 
old gray mare. And the habit of servitude, 
I find, has worn deep scars upon me. I am 
almost like the life prisoner who finds the 
door of his cell suddenly open, and fears to 
escape. Why, I had almost become all 
farmer. 

On the first morning after I left home I 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 7 

awoke as usual about five o'clock with the 
irresistible feeling that I must do the milking. 
So well disciplined had I become in my servi- 
tude that I instinctively thrust my leg out of 
bed — but pulled it quickly back in again, 
turned over, drew a long, luxurious breath, 
and said to myself: 

"Avaunt cows! Get thee behind me, 
swine! Shoo, hens!" 

Instantly the clatter of mastery to which I 
had responded so quickly for so many years 
grew perceptibly fainter, the hens cackled less 
domineeringly, the pigs squealed less insist- 
ently, and as for the strutting cockerel, that 
lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in the 
middle of a crow, and his voice gurgled away 
in a spasm of astonishment. As for the old 
farmhouse, it grew so dim I could scarcely see 
it at all! Having thus published abroad my 
Declaration of Independence, nailed my de- 
fiance to the door, and otherwise established 
myself as a free person, I turned over in my 
bed and took another delicious nap. 

Do you know, friend, we can be free of 
many things that dominate our lives by 
merely crying out a rebellious "Avaunt!" 

But in spite of this bold beginning, I assure 



8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

you it required several days to break the 
habit of cows and hens. The second morning 
I awakened again at five o'clock, but my leg 
did not make for the side of the bed; the third 
morning I was only partially awakened, and 
on the fourth morning I slept like a millionaire 
(or at least I slept as a millionaire is supposed 
to sleep!) until the clock struck seven. 

For some days after I left home — and I 
walked out as casually that morning as 
though I were going to the barn — I scarcely 
thought or tried to think of anything but the 
Road. Such an unrestrained sense of liberty, 
such an exaltation of freedom, I have not 
known since I was a lad. When I came to 
my farm from the city many years ago it was 
as one bound, as one who had lost out in the 
world's battle and was seeking, to get hold 
again somewhere upon the realities of life. 
I have related elsewhere how I thus came 
creeping like one sore wounded from the field 
of battle, and how, among our hills, in the 
hard, steady labour in the soil of the fields, 
with new and simple friends around me, I 
found a sort of rebirth or resurrection. I 
that was worn out, bankrupt both physically 
and morally, learned to live again. I have 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 9 

achieved something of high happiness in these 
years, something I know of pure contentment; 
and I have learned two or three deep and 
simple things about life: I have learned that 
happiness is not to be had for the seeking, 
but comes quietly to him who pauses at his 
difficult task and looks upward. I have 
learned that friendship is very simple, and, 
more than all else, I have learned the lesson 
of being quiet, of looking out across the 
meadows and hills, and of trusting a little in 
God. 

And now, for the moment, I am regaining 
another of the joys of youth — that of the 
sense of perfect freedom. I made no plans 
when I left home, I scarcely chose the direc- 
tion in which I was to travel, but drifted out, 
as a boy might, into the great busy world. 
Oh, I have dreamed of that! It seems almost 
as though, after ten years, I might again really 
touch the highest joys of adventure! 

So I took the Road as it came, as a man 
takes a woman, for better or worse — I took 
the Road, and the farms along it, and the 
sleepy little villages, and the streams from the 
hillsides — all with high enjoyment. They 
were good coin in my purse! And when I had 



lo THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

passed the narrow horizon of my acquaint- 
anceship, and reached country new to me, it 
seemed as though every sense I had began to 
awaken. I must have grown dull, uncon- 
sciously, in the last years there on my farm. 
I cannot describe the eagerness of discovery 
I felt at climbing each new hill, nor the long 
breath I took at the top of it as I surveyed 
new stretches of pleasant countryside. 

Assuredly this is one of the royal moments 
of all the year — fine, cool, sparkling spring 
weather. I think I never saw the meadows 
richer and greener — and the lilacs are still 
blooming, and the catbirds and orioles are 
here. The oaks are not yet in full leaf, but 
the maples have nearly reached their full 
mantle of verdure — they are very beautiful 
and charming to see. 

It is curious how at this moment of the year 
all the world seems astir. I suppose there is 
no moment in any of the seasons when the 
whole army of agriculture, regulars and 
reserves, is so fully drafted for service in the 
fields. And all the doors and windows, both 
in the little villages and on the farms, stand 
wide open to the sunshine, and all the women 
and girls are busy in the yards and gardens. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



II 



Such a fine, active, gossipy, adventurous world 
as it is at this moment of the year! 

It is the time, too, when all sorts of travel- 
ling people are afoot. People who have been 







iSUCH A FINE, GOSSIPY WORLD 



mewed up in the cities for the winter now 
take to the open road — all the peddlers and 
agents and umbrella-menders, all the nursery 
salesmen and fertilizer agents, all the tramps 
and scientists and poets — all abroad in the 



12 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

wide sunny roads. They, too, know well this 
hospitable moment of the spring; they, too, 
know that doors and hearts are open and that 
even into dull lives creeps a bit of the spirit 
of adventure. Why, a farmer will buy a corn 
planter, feed a tramp, or listen to a poet 
twice as easily at this time of year as at any 
other! 

For several days I found myself so fully 
occupied with the bustling life of the Road 
that I scarcely spoke to a living soul, but 
strode straight ahead. The spring has been 
late and cold: most of the corn and some of 
the potatoes are not yet in, and the tobacco 
lands are still bare and brown. Occasionally I 
stopped to watch some ploughman in the fields : 
I saw with a curious, deep satisfaction how the 
moist furrows, freshly turned, glistened in the 
warm sunshine. There seemed to be something 
right and fit about it, as well as human and 
beautiful. Or at evening I would stop to watch 
a ploughman driving homeward across his new 
brown fields, raising a cloud of fine dust from 
the fast drying furrow crests. The low sun 
shining through the dust and glorifying it, 
the weary-stepping horses, the man all sombre- 
coloured like the earth itself and knit into the 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 13 

scene as though a part of it, made a picture 
exquisitely fine to see. 

And what a joy I had also of the lilacs 
blooming in many a dooryard, the odour often 
trailing after me for a long distance in the 
road, and of the pungent scent at evening in 
the cool hollows of burning brush heaps and 
the smell of barnyards as I went by — ^not un- 
pleasant, not offensive — and above all, the deep, 
earthy, moist odour of new-ploughed fields. 

And then, at evening, to hear the sound of 
voices from the dooryards as I pass quite 
unseen; no words, but just pleasant, quiet 
intonations of human voices, borne through 
the still air, or the low sounds of cattle in the 
barnyards, quieting down for the night, and 
often, if near a village, the distant, slumbrous 
sound of a church bell, or even the rumble of 
a train — how good all these sounds are! 
They have all come to me again this week 
with renewed freshness and impressiveness. 
I am living deep again! 

It was not, indeed, until last Wednesday 
that I began to get my fill, temporarily, of 
the outward satisfaction of the Road — the 
primeval takings of the senses — the mere 
joys of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. 



14 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

But on that day I began to wake up; I began 
to have a desire to know something of all the 
strange and interestng people who are working 
in their fields, or standing invitingly in their 
doorways, or so busily afoot in the country 
roads. Let me add, also, for this is one of the 
most important parts of my present experience, 
that this new desire was far from being wholly 
esoteric. I had also begun to have cravings 
which would not in the least be satisfied by 
landscapes or dulled by the sights and sounds 
of the road. A whiiT here and there from a 
doorway at mealtime had made me long for 
my own home, for the sight of Harriet calling 
from the steps : 

"Dinner, David." 

But I had covenanted with myself long 
before starting that I would literally "live 
light in spring." It was the one and primary 
condition I made with myself — and made 
with serious purpose — and when I came 
away I had only enough money in my pocket 
and sandwiches in my pack to see me through 
the first three or four days. Any man may 
brutally pay his way anywhere, but it is quite 
another thing to be accepted by your human- 
kind not as a paid lodger but as a friend. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 15 

Always, it seems to me, I have wanted to 
submit myself, and indeed submit the stranger, 
to that test. Moreover, how can any man 
look for true adventure in life if he always 
knows to a certainty where his next meal is 
coming from? In a world so completely 
dominated by goods, by things, by .posses- 
sions, and smothered by security, what fine 
adventure is left to a man of spirit save the 
adventure of poverty? 

I do not mean by this the adventure of 
involuntary poverty, for I maintain that in- 
voluntary poverty, like involuntary riches, 
is a credit to no man. It is only as we domi- 
nate life that we really live. What I mean 
here, if I may so express it, is an adventure in 
achieved poverty. In the lives of such true 
men as Francis of Assisi and Tolstoi, that 
which draws the world to them in secret 
sympathy is not that they lived lives 
of poverty, but rather, having riches at 
their hands, or for the very asking, that 
they chose poverty as the better way of 
life. 

As for me, I do not in the least pretend to 
have accepted the final logic of an achieved 
poverty. I have merely abolished tempo- 



i6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

rarily from my life a few hens and cows, a 
comfortable old farmhouse, and certain other 
emoluments and hereditaments — but re- 
main the slave of sundry cloth upon my back 
and sundry articles in my gray bag — includ- 
ing a fat pocket volume or so, and a tin whistle. 
Let them pass now. To-morrow I may wish 
to attempt life with still less. I might survive 
without my battered copy of * ^Montaigne" or 
even submit to existence without that sense of 
distant companionship symboHzed by a post- 
age-stamp, and as for trousers 

In this deceptive world, how difficult of 
attainment is perfection! 

No, I expect I shall continue for a long 
time to owe the worm his silk, the beast his 
hide, the sheep his wool, and the cat his 
perfume! What I am seeking is something 
as simple and as quiet as the trees or the hills 
— just to look out around me at the pleasant 
countryside, to enjoy a little of this passing 
show, to meet (and to help a little if I may) 
a few human beings, and thus to get more 
nearly into the sweet kernel of human life. 
My friend, you may or may not think this 
a worthy object; if you do not, stop here, 
go no further with me; but if you do, 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 17 

why, we'll exchange great words on the 
road; we'll look up at the sky together, 
we'll see and hear the finest things in this 
world! We'll enjoy the sun! We'll live 
light in spring! 

Until last Tuesday, then, I was carried 
easily and comfortably onward by the corn, 
the eggs, and the honey of my past labours, and 
before Wednesday noon I began to experience 
in certain vital centres recognizable symptoms 
of a variety of discomfort anciently familiar 
to man. And it was all the sharper because 
I did not know how or where I could assuage 
it. In all my life, in spite of various ups and 
downs in a fat w^orld, I don't think I was 
ever before genuinely hungr}^. Oh, I've been 
hungry in a reasonable, civilized way, but I 
have always known where in an hour or so I 
could get all I wanted to eat — a condition 
accountable, in this world, I am convinced, 
for no end of stupidity. But to be both 
physically and, let us say, psychologically 
hungry, and not to know where or how to get 
anything to eat, adds something to the zest 
of life. 

By noon on Wednesday, then, I was re- 
duced quite to a point of necessity. But 



1 8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

where was I to begin, and how? I know from 
long experience the suspicion with which the 
ordinary farmer meets the Man of the Road 
— the man who appears to wish to enjoy the 
fruits of the earth without working for them 
with his hands. It is a distrust deep-seated 
and ages old. Nor can the Man of the Road 
ever quite understand the Man of the Fields. 
And here was I, for so long the stationary Man 
of the Fields, essaying the role of the Man of 
the Road. I experienced a sudden sense of the 
enlivenment of the faculties: I must now 
depend upon wit or cunning or human nature 
to win my way, not upon mere skill of the hand 
or strength in the bent back. Whereas in my 
former life, when I was assailed by a Man of 
the Road, whether tramp or peddler or poet, I 
had' only to stand stock-still within my fences 
and say nothing — though indeed I never 
could do that, being far too much interested 
in every one who came my way — and the 
invader was soon repelled. There is nothing 
so resistant as the dull security of possession: 
the stolidity of ownership ! 

Many times that day I stopped by a field 
side or at the end of a lane, or at a house-gate, 
and considered the possibilities of making an 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 19 

attack. Oh, I measured the houses and barns 
I saw with a new eye! The kind of country 
I had known so long and familiarly became a 
new and foreign land, full of strange possi- 
bilities. I spied out the men in the fields and 
did not fail, also, to see what I could of the 
commissary department of each farmstead 
as I passed. I walked for miles looking thus 
for a favourable opening — and with a sensa- 
tion of embarrassment at once disagreeable 
and pleasurable. As the afternoon began to 
deepen I saw that I must absolutely do some- 
thing: a whole day tramping in the open air 
without a bite to eat is an irresistible argu- 
ment. 

Presently I saw from the road a farmer and 
his son planting potatoes in a sloping field. 
There was no house at all in view. At the 
bars stood a light wagon half filled with bags 
of seed potatoes, and the horse which had 
drawn it stood quietly, not far off, tied to the 
fence. The man and the boy, each with a 
basket on his arm, were at the farther end of 
the field, dropping potatoes. I stood quietly 
watching them. They stepped quickly and 
kept their eyes on the furrows: good workers. 
I liked the looks of them. I liked also the 



20 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

straight, clean furrows; I liked the appearance 
of the horse. 

" I will stop here, " I said to myself. 

I cannot at all convey the sense of high 
adventure I had as I stood there. Though I 
had not the slightest idea of what I should 
do or say, yet I was determined upon the 
attack. 

Neither father nor son saw me until they 
had nearly reached the end of the field. 

"Step lively, Ben," I heard the man say 
with some impatience; "we've got to finish 
this field to-day. " 

"I am steppin' lively, dad, " responded the 
boy, "but it's awful hot. We can't possibly 
finish to-day. It's too much. " 

"We've got to get through here to-day," 
the man replied grimly; "w^e're already two 
weeks late. " 

I know just how the man felt; for I knew 
well the difficulty a farmer has in getting help 
in planting* time. The spring waits for no 
man. My heart went out to the man and boy 
struggling there in the heat of their sloping 
field. For this is the real warfare of the 
common life. 

"Why," I said to myself with a curious lift 




" ' / will stop here,'' I said to myself " 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 21 

of the heart, "they have need of a fellow just 
like me." 

At that moment the boy saw me and, miss- 
ing a step in the rhythm of the planting, the 
father also looked up and saw me. But 
neither said a word until the furrows were 
finished, and the planters came to refill their 
baskets. 

"Fine afternoon," I said, sparring for an 
opening. 

"Fine," responded the man rather shortly, 
glancing up from his work. I recalled the 
scores of times I had been exactly in his place, 
and had glanced up to see the stranger in the 
road. 

"Got another basket handy?" I asked. 

"There is one somewhere around here," he 
answered not too cordially. The boy said 
nothing at all, but eyed me with absorbing 
interest. The gloomy look had already gone 
from his face. 

I slipped my gray bag from my shoulder, 
took off my coat, and put them both down 
inside the fence. Then I found the basket and 
began to fill it from one of the bags. Both 
man and boy looked up at me questioningly. 
I enjoyed the situation immensely. 



22 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"I heard you say to your son, " I said, "that 
you'd have to hurry in order to get in your 
potatoes to-day. I can see that for myself. 
Let me take a hand for a row or two. " 

The unmistakable shrewd look of the bar- 
gainer came suddenly into the man's face, but 
when I went about my business without hesi- 
tation or questioning, he said nothing at all. 
As for the boy, the change in his countenance 
was marvellous to see. Something new and 
astonishing had come into the world. Oh, 
I know what a thing it is to be a boy and have 
to work in trouting time ! 

"How near are you planting, Ben ? " I asked. 

"About fourteen inches." 

So we began in fine spirits. I was delighted 
with the favourable beginning of my enter- 
prise; there is nothing which so draws men to- 
gether as their employment at a common task. 

Ben was a lad some fifteen years old — very 
stout and stocky, with a fine open countenance 
and a frank blue eye — all boy. His nose 
was as freckled as the belly of a trout. The 
whole situation, including the prospect of help 
in finishing a tiresome job, pleased him hugely. 
He stole a glimpse from time to time at me and 
then at his father. Finally he said : 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 23 

"Say, you'll have to step lively to keep up 
with dad. " 

"I'll show you," I said, "how we used to 
drop potatoes when I was a boy. " 

And with that I began to step ahead more 
quickly and make the pieces fairly fly. 

"We old fellows," I said to the father, 
"must give these young sprouts a lesson once 
in a while. " 

"You will, will you?" responded the boy, 
and instantly began to drop the potatoes 
at a prodigious speed. The father followed 
with more dignity, but with evident amuse- 
ment, and so we all came with a rush to the end 
of the row. 

"I guess that beats the record across this 
field!" remarked the lad, pufiing and wiping 
his forehead. "Say, but you're a good one!" 

It gave me a peculiar thrill of pleasure; 
there is nothing more pleasing than the frank 
admiration of a boy. 
We paused a moment and I said to the man: 

"This looks like fine potato land. " 

"The' ain't any better in these parts," 
he replied with some pride in his voice. 

And so we went at the planting again: and 
as we planted we had great talk of seed po- 



24 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

tatoes and the advantages and disadvantages 
of mechanical planters, of cultivating and 
spraying, and all the lore of prices and profits. 
Once we stopped at the lower end of the field 
to get a drink from a jug of water set in the 
shade of a fence corner, and once we set the 
horse in the thills and moved the seed farther 
up the field. And tired and hungry as I felt 
I really enjoyed the work; I really enjoyed 
talking with this busy father and son, and I 
wondered what their home life was like and 
what were their real ambitions and hopes. 
Thus the sun sank lower and lower, the long 
shadows began to creep into the valleys, 
and we came finally toward the end of the 
field. Suddenly the boy Ben cried out: 

"There's Sis!" 

I glanced up and saw standing near the 
gateway a slim, bright girl of about twelve 
in a fresh gingham dress. 

"We're coming!" roared Ben, exultantly. 

While we were hitching up the horse, the 
man said to me: 

"You'll come down with us and have some 
supper." 

"Indeed I will," I replied, trying not to 
make my response too eager. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 25 

"Did mother make gingerbread to-day?" 
I heard the boy whisper audibly. 

"Sh-h — " repHed the girl; "who is that 
man?" 

"/ don't know" — with a great accent of 
mystery — "and dad don't know. Did 
mother make gingerbread?" 

"Sh-h — he'll hear you." 

"Gee! but he can plant potatoes. He 
dropped down on us out of a clear sky." 

"What is he?" she asked. "A tramp?" 

"Nope, not a tramp. He works. But, Sis, 
did mother make gingerbread?" 

So we all got into the light wagon and 
drove briskly out along the shady coun- 
try road. The evening was coming on, 
and the air was full of the scent of blos- 
soms. We turned finally into a lane and 
thus came promptly, for the horse was as 
eager as we, to the capacious farmyard. A 
motherly woman came out from the house, 
spoke to her son, and nodded pleasantly to 
me. There was no especial introduction. I 
said merely, "My name is Grayson," and 
I was accepted without a word. 

I waited to help the man, whose name I 
had now learned — it was Stanley — with his 



26 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

horse and wagon, and then we came up to 
the house. Near the back door there was a 
pump, with a bench and basin set just within 
a little cleanly swept, open shed. Rolling 
back my collar and baring my arms I washed 
myself in the cool water, dashing it over my 
head until I gasped, and then stepping back, 
breathless and refreshed, I found the slim 
girl, Mary, at my elbow with a clean soft 
towel. As I stood wiping quietly I could 
smell the ambrosial odours from the kitchen. 
In all my life I never enjoyed a moment more 
than that, I think. 

"Come in now," said the motherly Mrs. 
Stanley. 

So we filed into the roomy kitchen, where 
an older girl, called Kate, was flying about 
placing steaming dishes upon the table. 
There was also an older son, who had been 
at the farm chores. It was altogether a fine, 
vigorous, independent American family. So 
we all sat down and drew up our chairs. Then 
we paused a moment, and the father, bowing 
his head, said in a low voice: 

"For all Thy good gifts. Lord, we thank 
Thee. Preserve us and keep us through an- 
other night." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 27 

I suppose it was a very ordinary farm 
meal, but it seems to me I never tasted a 
better one. The huge piles of new baked 
bread, the sweet farm butter, already deli- 
cious with the flavour of new grass, the bacon 
and eggs, the potatoes, the rhubarb sauce, 
the great plates of new, hot gingerbread and, 
at the last, the custard pie — a great wedge 
of it, with fresh cheese. After the first 
ravenous appetite of hardworking men was 
satisfied, there came to be a good deal of 
lively conversation. The girls had some joke 
between them which Ben was trying in vain to 
fathom. The older son told how much milk 
a certain Alderney cow had given, and Mr. 
Stanley, quite changed now as he sat at his 
own table from the rather grim farmer of the 
afternoon, revealed a capacity for a husky 
sort of fun, joking Ben about his potato- 
planting and telling in a lively way of his 
race with me. As for Mrs Stanley, she sat 
smiling behind her tall coffee pot, radiating 
good cheer and hospitality. They asked me 
no questions at all, and I was so hungry and 
tired that I volunteered no information. 

After supper we went out for half or three 
quarters of an hour to do some final chores, 



28 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

and Mr. Stanley and I stopped in the cattle 
yard and looked over the cows, and talked 
learnedly about the pigs, and I admired 
his spring calves to his heart's content, for 
they really were a fine lot. When we came in 
again the lamps had been lighted in the sit- 
ting-room and the older daughter was at the 
telephone exchanging the news of the day 
with some neighbour — and with great 
laughter and enjoyment. Occasionally she 
would turn and repeat some bit of gossip 
to the family, and Mrs. Stanley would ex- 
claim: 

"Do tell!" 

"Can't we have a bit of music to-night?" 
inquired Mr. Stanley. 

Instantly Ben and the slim girl, Mary, 
made a wild dive for the front room — 
the parlour — and came out with a first- 
rate phonograph which they placed on the 
table. 

" Something lively now," said Mr. Stanley. 

So they put on a rollicking negro song 
called "My Georgia Belle," which, besides 
the tuneful voices, introduced a steamboat 
whistle and a musical clangour of bells. When 
it wound up with a bang, Mr. Stanley took 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 29 

his big comfortable pipe out of his mouth 
and cried out: 

"Fine, fine!" 

We had further music of the same sort and 
with one record the older daughter, Kate, 
broke into the song with a full, strong though 
uncultivated voice — which pleased us all 
very much indeed. 

Presently Mrs. Stanley, who was sitting 
under the lamp with a basket of socks to 
mend, began to nod. 

"Mother's giving the signal," said the 
older son. 

"No, no, I'm not a bit sleepy," exclaimed 
Mrs. Stanley. 

But with further joking and laughing the 
family began to move about. The older 
daughter gave me a hand lamp and showed 
me the way upstairs to a little room at the 
end of the house. 

"I think," she said with pleasant dignity, 
"you will find everything you need." 

I cannot tell with what solid pleasure I 
rolled into bed or how soundly and sweetly I 
slept. 

This was the first day of my real adven- 
tures. 



I WHISTLE 




-^-z --m. 




"iV'x/«/^ 







CHAPTER II 
I WTIISTLE 



WHEN I was a boy I learned after many 
discouragements to play on a tin whistle. 
There was a wandering old fellow in our 
town who would sit for hours on the shady 
side of a certain ancient hotel-barn, and with 
his little whistle to his lips, and gently swaying 
his head to his tune and tapping one foot in 
the gravel, he would produce the most wonder- 
ful and beguiling melodies. His favourite selec- 
tions were very lively; he played, I remember, 
"Old Dan Tucker," and "Money Musk," 
and the tune of a rollicking old song, now no 
doubt long forgotten, called "Wait for the 
Wagon.'' I can see him yet, with his jolly 
eyes half closed, his lips puckered around the 
whistle, and his fingers curiously and stiffly 
poised over the stops. I am sure I shall 

33 



34 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

never forget the thrill which his music gave 
to the heart of a certain barefoot boy. 

At length, by means I have long since 
forgotten, I secured a tin whistle exactly 
like Old Tom Madison's and began dili- 
gently to practise such tunes as I knew. 
I am quite sure now that I must have made 
a nuisance of myself, for it soon appeared 
to be the set purpose of every member of the 
family to break up my efforts. Whenever 
my father saw me with the whistle to my 
lips, he would instantly set me at some useful 
work (oh, he was an adept in discovering 
useful work to do — for a boy!). And at 
the very sight of my stern aunt I would 
instantly secrete my whistle in my blouse 
and fly for the garret or cellar, like a cat caught 
in the cream. Such are the early tribulations 
of musical genius! 

At last I discovered a remote spot on a 
beam in the hay-barn where, lighted by a ray 
of sunlight which came through a crack in 
the eaves and pointed a dusty golden finger 
into that hay-scented interior, I practised 
rapturously and to my heart's content upon 
my tin whistle. I learned "Money Musk" 
until I could play it in Old Tom Madison's 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 35 

best style — even to the last nod and final 
foot-tap. I turned a certain church hymn 
called "Yield Not to Temptation" into 
something quite inspiriting, and I played 
"Marching Through Georgia" until all the 
"happy hills of hay" were to the fervid eye 
of a boy's imagination full of tramping soldiers. 
Oh, I shall never forget the joys of those 
hours in the hay-barn, nor the music of that 
secret tin whistle! I can hear yet the croon- 
ing of the pigeons in the eaves, and the 
slatey sound of their wings as they flew 
across the open spaces in the great barn; I 
can smell yet the odour of the hay. 

But with years, and the city, and the shame 
of youth, I put aside and almost forgot the 
art of whistling. When I was preparing for the 
present pilgrimage, however, it came to me 
with a sudden thrill of pleasure that nothing 
in the wide world now prevented me from 
getting a whistle and seeing whether I had 
forgotten my early cunning At the very 
first good-sized town I came to I was de- 
lighted to find at a little candy and toy shop 
just the sort of whistle I wanted, at the 
extravagant price of ten cents. I bought it 
and put it in the bottom of my knapsack. 



36 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

''Am I not old enough now," I said to 
myself, ''to be as youthful as I choose?" 

Isn't it the strangest thing in the world 
how long it takes us to learn to accept the 
joys of simple pleasures ? — and some of us 
never learn at all. "Boo!" says the neigh- 
bourhood, and we are instantly frightened 
into doing a thousand unnecessary and un- 
pleasant things, or prevented from doing a 
thousand beguiling things. 

For the first few days I was on the road 
I thought often with pleasure of the whistle 
lying there in my bag, but it was not until 
after I left the Stanleys' that I felt exactly 
in the mood to try it. 

The fact is, my adventures on the Stanley 
farm had left me in a very cheerful frame of 
mind. They convinced me that some of the 
great things I had expected of my pilgrimage 
were realizable possibilities. Why, I had 
walked right into the heart of as fine a family 
as I have seen these many days. 

I remained with them the entire day follow- 
ing the patoto-planting. We were out at five 
o'clock in the morning, and after helping with 
the chores, and eating a prodigious breakfast, 
we went again to the potato-field, and part 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 37 

of the time I helped plant a few remaining 
rows, and part of the time I drove a team 
attached to a wing-plow to cover the planting 
of the previous day. 

In the afternoon a slashing spring rain 
set in, and Mr. Stanley, who was a fore- 
handed worker, found a job for all of us 
in the barn. Ben, the younger son, and 
I sharpened mower-blades and a scythe or 
so, Ben turning the grindstone and I holding 
the blades and telling him stories into the 
bargain. Mr. Stanley and his stout older 
son overhauled the work-harness and tinkered 
the corn-planter. The doors at both ends 
of the barn stood wide open, and through 
one of them, framed like a picture, we could 
see the scudding floods descend upon the 
meadows, and through the other, across 
a fine stretch of open country, we could 
see all the roads glistening and the tree- 
tops moving under the rain. 

"Fine, fine!" exclaimed Mr. Stanley, look- 
ing out from time to time, "we got in our 
potatoes just in the nick of time." 

After supper that evening I told them of 
my plan to leave them on the following 
morning. 



38 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Don't do that," said Mrs. Stanley heart- 
ily; "stay on with us." 

"Yes," said Mr. Stanley, "we're short- 
handed, and I'd be glad to have a man like 
you all summer. There ain't any one around 
here will pay a good man more'n I will, nor 
treat 'im better." 

"I'm sure of it, Mr. Stanley," I said, 
"but I can't stay with you." 

At that the tide of curiosity which I had 
seen rising ever since I came began to break 
through. Oh, I know how difficult it is to 
let the wanderer get by without taking toll 
of him! There are not so many people 
here in the country that we can afford to 
neglect them. And as I had nothing in 
the world to conceal, and, indeed, loved 
nothing better than the give and take of 
getting acquainted, we were soon at it in 
good earnest. 

But it was not enough to tell them that 
my name was David Grayson and where 
my farm was located, and how many acres 
there were, and how much stock I had, and 
what I raised. The great particular "Why?" 
— as I knew it would be — concerned my 
strange presence on the road at this season 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 39 

of the year and the reason why I should turn 
in by chance, as I had done, to help at their 
planting. If a man is stationary, it seems 
quite impossible for him to imagine why 
any one should care to wander; and as for 
the wanderer it is inconceivable to him 
how any one can remain permanently at 
home. 

We were all sitting comfortably around 
the table in the living-room. The lamps 
were lighted, and Mr. Stanley, in slippers, 
was smoking his pipe and Mrs. Stanley 
was darning socks over a mending-gourd, 
and the two young Stanleys were whis- 
pering and giggling about some matter of 
supreme consequence to youth. The win- 
dows were open, and we could smell the sweet 
scent of the lilacs from the yard and hear the 
drumming of the rain as it fell on the roof of 
the porch. 

"It's easy to explain," I said. "The 
fact is, it got to the point on my farm that 
I wasn't quite sure whether I owned it or 
it owned me. And I made up my mind 
I'd get away for a while from my own horses 
and cattle and see what the world was like. 
I wanted to see how people lived up here, 



40 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

and what they are thinking about, and how 
they do their farming." 

As I talked of my plans and of the duty 
one had, as I saw it, to be a good broad 
man as well as a good farmer, I grew more 
and more interested and enthusiastic. Mr. 
Stanley took his pipe slowly from his mouth, 
held it poised until it finally went out, 
and sat looking at me with a rapt expression. 
I never had a better audience. Finally, Mr. 
Stanley said very earnestly: 

"And you have felt that way, too?" 

"Why, father!" exclaimed Mrs. Stanley, 
in astonishment. 

Mr. Stanley hastily put his pipe back 
into his mouth and confusedly searched 
in his pockets for a match; but I knew 
I had struck down deep into a common 
experience. Here was this brisk and 
prosperous farmer having his dreams 
too — dreams that even his wife did not 
know ! 

So I continued my talk with even greater 
fervour. I don't think that the boy Ben 
understood all that I said, for I was dealing 
with experiences common mostly to older 
men, but he somehow seemed to get the 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 41 

spirit of it, for quite unconsciously he began 
to hitch his chair toward me, then he laid 
his hand on my chair-arm and finally and 
quite simply he rested his arm against mine 
and looked at me with all his eyes. I keep^ 
learning that there is nothing which reaches 
men's hearts like talking straight out the 
convictions and emotions of your innermost \ 
soul. Those who hear you may not agree 
with you, or they may not understand you 
fully, but something incalculable, something 
vital, passes. And as for a boy or girl it 
is one of the sorriest of mistakes to talk down 
to them; almost always your lad of fifteen 
thinks more simply, more fundamentally, 
than you do; and what he accepts as good 
coin is not facts or precepts, but feelings 
and convictions — life. And why shouldn't^ 
we speak out? 

"I long ago decided," I said, "to try to 
be fully what I am and not to be anything 
or anybody else." 

"That's right, that's right!" exclaimed Mr. 
Stanley, nodding his head vigorously. 

"It's about the oldest wisdom there is," 
I said, and with that I thought of the volume 
I carried in my pocket, and straightway I 



42 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

pulled it out and after a moment's search 
found the passage I wanted. 

"Listen," I said, "to what this old Roman 
philosopher said" — and I held the book up 
to the lamp and read aloud: 

"'You can be invincible if you enter into 
no contest in which it is not in your power 
to conquer. Take care, then, when you 
observe a man honoured before others or 
possessed of great power, or highly esteemed 
for any reason, not to suppose him happy 
/ and be not carried away by the appearance. 
For if the nature of the good is in our power, 
neither envy nor jealousy will have a place in 
us. But you yourself will not wish to be a 
general or a senator or consul, but a free man, 
and there is only one way to do this, to care 
not for the things which are not in our 
power." 

"That," said Mr. Stanley triumphantly, 
"is exactly what Fve always said, but I 
didn't know it was in any book. I always 
said I didn't want to be a senator or a legis- 
lator, or any other sort of office-holder. It's 
good enough for me right here on this farm." 

At that moment I glanced down into 
Ben's shining eyes. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 43 

" But I want to be a senator or — some- 
thing — when I grow up," he said eagerly. 

At this the older brother, who was sitting 
not far off, broke into a laugh, and the boy, 
who for a moment had been drawn out of 
his reserve, shrank back again and coloured 
to the hair. 

"Well, Ben," said I, putting my hand on 
his knee, "don't you let anything stop you. 
I'll back you up; I'll vote for you." 

After breakfast the next morning Mr. 
Stanley drew me aside and said: 

"Now I want to pay you for your help 
yesterday and the day before." 

"No," I said. "I've had more than value 
received. You've taken me in like a friend 
and brother. I've enjoyed it." 

So Mrs. Stanley half filled my knapsack 
with the finest luncheon I've seen in many a 
day, and thus, with as pleasant a farewell as 
if I'd been a near relative, I set off up the 
country road. I was a little distressed in 
parting to see nothing of the boy Ben, for 
I had formed a genuine liking for him, but 
upon reaching a clump of trees which hid 
the house from the road I saw him standing 
in the moist grass of a fence corner. 



44 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"I want to say good-bye," he said in the 
gruff voice of embarrassment. 

"Ben," I said, "I missed you, and I'd 
have hated to go off without seeing you 
again. Walk a bit with me." 

So we walked side by side, talking quietly, 
and when at last I shook his hand I said : 

"Ben, don't you ever be afraid of acting 
up to the very best thoughts you have in 
your heart." 

He said nothing for a moment, and then: 
"Gee! I'm sorry you're goin' away!" 

"Gee!" I responded, "I'm sorry, tool" 

With that we both laughed, but when 
I reached the top of the hill, and looked 
back, I saw him still standing there bare- 
footed in the road looking after me. I waved 
my hand and he waved his: and I saw him 
no more. 

No country, after all, produces any better 
crop than its inhabitants. And as I trav- 
elled onward I liked to think of these brave, 
temperate, industrious, God-friendly Ameri- 
can people. I have no fear of the country 
while so many of them are still to be found 
upon the farms and in the towns of this land. 

So I tramped onward full of cheerfulness. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 45 

The ram had ceased, but all the world was 
moist and very green and still. I walked 
for more than two hours with the greatest 
pleasure. About ten o'clock in the morning 
I stopped near a brook to drink and rest, for 
I was warm and tired. And it was then that 
I bethought me of the little tin pipe in my 
knapsack, and straightway I got it out, and, 
sitting down at the foot of a tree near the 
brook, I put it to my lips and felt for the 
stops with unaccustomed fingers. At first 
I made the saddest sort of work of it, and 
was not a little disappointed, indeed, with 
the sound of the whistle itself. It was 
nothing to my memory of it! It seemed thin 
and tinny. 

However, I persevered at it, and soon 
produced a recognizable imitation of Tom 
Madison's "Old Dan Tucker." My suc- 
cess quite pleased me, and I became so 
absorbed that I quite lost account of the 
time and place. There was no one to hear me 
save a bluejay which for an hour or more 
kept me company. He sat on a twig just 
across the brook, cocking his head at me, and 
saucily wagging his tail. Occasionally he 
would dart away among the trees crying 



46 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

shrilly; but his curiosity would always get 
the better of him and back he would come 
again to try to solve the mystery of this 
rival whistling, which I'm sure was as shrill 
and as harsh as his own. 

Presently, quite to my astonishment, I 
saw a man standing near the brookside 
not a dozen paces away from me. How 
long he had been there I don't know, for 
I had heard nothing of his coming. Be- 
yond him in the town road I could see the 
head of his horse and the top of his buggy. 
I said not a word, but continued with my 
practising. Why shouldn't I? But it gave 
me quite a thrill for the moment; and at 
once I began to think of the possibilities 
of the situation. What a thing it was to 
have so many unexpected and interesting 
situations developing! So I nodded my head 
and tapped my foot, and blew into my 
whistle all the more energetically. I knew 
my visitor could not possibly keep away. 
And he could not; presently he came nearer 
and said: 

"What are you doing, neighbour.^" 
I continued a moment with my play- 
ing, but commanded him with my eye. 




WHAT ARE YOU DOING, NEIGHBOUR?" 



48 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

Oh, I assure you I assumed all the airs of 
a virtuoso. When I had finished my tune 
I removed my whistle deliberately and wiped 
my lips. 

"Why, enjoying myself," I replied with 
greatest good humour. "What are you do- 
ing?" 

"Why," he said, "watching you enjoy 
yourself. I heard you playing as I passed 
in the road, and couldn't imagine what it 
could be." 

I told him I thought it might still be 
difficult, having heard me near at hand, 
to imagine what it could be — and thus, 
tossing the ball of good-humoured repar- 
tee back and forth, we walked down to the 
road together. He had a quiet old horse and 
a curious top buggy with the unmistakable 
box of an agent or peddler built on behind. 

"My name," he said, "is Canfield. I 
fight dust." 

"And mine," I said, "is Grayson. I 
whistle." 

I discovered that he was an agent for 
brushes, and he opened his box and showed 
me the greatest assortment of big and little 
brushes : bristle brushes, broom brushes, yarn 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 49 

brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and 
brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable 
size and shape that ever I saw in all my 
life. He had out one of his especial pets — 
he called it his "leader" — and feeling it 
familiarly in his hand he instinctively began 
the jargon of well-handled and voice- worn 
phrases which went with that particular 
brush. It was just as though some one had 
touched a button and had started him going. 
It was amazing to me that any one in the 
world should be so much interested in mere 
brushes — until he actually began to make 
me feel that brushes were as interesting as 
anything else! 

What a strange, little, dried-up old fellow 
he was, with his balls of muttonchop side- 
whiskers, his thick eyebrows, and his lively 
blue eyes ! — a man evidently not readily 
turned aside by rebuffs. He had already 
shown that his wit as a talker had been 
sharpened by long and varied contact with a 
world of reluctant purchasers. I was really 
curious to know more of him, so I said finally: 

"See here, Mr. Canfield, it's just noon. 
Why not sit down here with me and have 
a bit of luncheon?" 



so THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Why not?" he responded with alacrity. 
"As the fellow said, why not?" 

He unhitched his horse, gave him a drink 
from the brook, and then tethered him where 
he could nip the roadside grass. I opened 
my bag and explored the wonders of Mrs. 
Stanley's luncheon. I cannot describe the 
absolutely carefree feeling I had. Always 
at home, when I would have liked to stop 
at the roadside with a stranger, I felt the 
nudge of a conscience troubled with cows 
and corn, but here I could stop where I 
liked, or go on when I liked, and talk with 
whom I pleased, as long as I pleased. 

So we sat there, the brush-peddler and 
I, under the trees, and ate Mrs. Stanley's 
fine luncheon, drank the clear water from 
the brook, and talked great talk. Com- 
pared with Mr. Canfield I . was a babe at 
wandering — and equally at talking. Was 
there any business he had not been in, or 
any place in the country he had not visited? 
He had sold everything from fly-paper to 
threshing-machines, he had picked up a 
large working knowledge of the weaknesses 
of human nature, and had arrived at the 
age of sixty-six with just enough available 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 51 

cash to pay the manufacturer for a new supply 
of brushes. In strict confidence, I drew 
certain conclusions from the colour of his 
nose! He had once had a family, but 
dropped them somewhere along the road. 
Most of our brisk neighbours would have 
put him down as a failure — an old man, 
and nothing laid by! But I wonder — I 

wonder • One thing I am coming to learn 

in this world, and that is to let people haggle 
along with their lives as I haggle along with 
mine. 

We both made tremendous inroads on 
the luncheon, and I presume we might 
have sat there talking all the afternoon if 
I had not suddenly bethought myself with 
a not unpleasant thrill that my resting- 
place for the night was still gloriously un- 
decided. 

"Friend," I said, "I've got to be up and 
going; I haven't so much as a penny in 
my pocket, and I've got to find a place 
to sleep." 

The effect of this remark upon Mr. Can- 
field was magical. He threw up both his 
hands and cried out: 

"You're that way, are you?" — as though 



52 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

for the first time he really understood. We 
were at last on common ground. 

"Partner," said he, "you needn't tell me 
nothin' about it. I've been right there 
myself." 

At once he began to bustle about with 
great enthusiasm. He was for taking com- 
plete charge of me, and I think, if I had 
permitted it, would instantly have made a 
brush-agent of me. At least he would have 
carried me along with him in his buggy; but 
when he suggested it I felt very much, I 
think, as some old monk must have felt 
who had taken a vow to do some particular 
thing in some particular way. With great 
difficulty I convinced him finally that my 
way was different from his — though he was 
regally impartial as to what road he took 
next — and, finally, with some reluctance, 
he started to climb into his buggy. 

A thought, however, struck him suddenly, 
and he stepped down again, ran around to 
the box at the back of his buggy, opened it 
with a mysterious and smiling look at me, 
and took out a small broom-brush with 
which he instantly began brushing off my 
coat and trousers — in the liveliest and most 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 53 

exuberant way. When he had finished this 
occupation, he quickly handed the brush to 
me. 

''A token of esteem," he said, "from a 
fellow traveller." 

I tried in vain to thank him, but he held 
up his hand, scrambled quickly into his 
buggy, and was for driving off instantly, 
but paused and beckoned me toward him. 
When I approached the buggy, he took hold 
of one the lapels of my coat, bent over, 
and said with the utmost seriousness: 

"No man ought to take the road with- 
out a brush. A good broom-brush is the 
world's greatest civilizer. Are you looking 
seedy or dusty? — why, this here brush 
will instantly make you a respectable citi- 
zen. Take my word for it, friend, never 
go into any strange house without stoppin' 
and brushin' off. It's money in your purse! 
You can get along without dinner sometimes, 
or even without a shirt, but without a brush 
— never! There's nothin' in the world so 
necessary to rich an' poor, old an' young 
as a good brush!" 

And with a final burst of enthusiasm 
the brush-peddler drove off up the hill- 



54 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



I stood watching him and when he looked 
around I waved the brush high over my 
head in token of a grateful farewell. 

It was a good, serviceable, friendly brush. 
I carried it throughout my wanderings; and 
as I sit here writing in my study, at this 
moment, I can see it hanging on a hook at 
the side of my fireplace. 




THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE 
OF THE ROAD 











CHAPTER III 

THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF 
THE ROAD 

EVERY one," remarks Tristram Shandy, 
"will speak of the fair as his own market 
has gone in it." 

It came near being a sorry fair for me 
on the afternoon following my parting with 
the amiable brush-peddler. The plain fact 
is, my success at the Stanleys', and the easy 
manner in which I had fallen in with Mr. 
Canfield, gave me so much confidence in 
myself as a sort of Master of the Road that 
I proceeded with altogether too much as- 
surance. 



57 



S8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I am firmly convinced that the prime 
quality to be cultivated by the pilgrim is 
humility of spirit; he must be willing to 
accept Adventure in whatever garb she 
chooses to present herself. He must be 
able to see the shining form of the unusual 
through the dull garments of the normal. 

The fact is, I walked that afternoon 
with my head in air and passed many a 
pleasant farmstead where men were work- 
ing in the fields, and many an open door- 
way, and a mill or two, and a town — always 
looking for some Great Adventure. 

Somewhere upon this road, I thought to 
myself, I shall fall in with a Great Person, 
or become a part of a Great Incident. I 
recalled with keen pleasure the experience 
of that young Spanish student of whom 
Carlyle writes in one of his volumes, who, 
riding out from Madrid one day, came un- 
expectedly upon the greatest man in the 
world. This great man, of whom Carlyle 
observes (I have looked up the passage 
since I came home), "a kindlier, meeker, or 
braver heart has seldom looked upon the 
sky in this world," had ridden out from 
the city for the last time in his life "to 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD S9 

take one other look at the azure firmament 
and green mosaic pavements and the strange 
carpentry and arras work of this noble pal- 
ace of a world." 

As the old story has it, the young student 
"came pricking on hastily, complaining that 
they went at such a pace as gave him little 
chance of keeping up with them. One of 
the party made answer that the blame lay 
with the horse of Don Miguel de Cervantes, 
whose trot was of the speediest. He had 
hardly pronounced the name when the stu~ 
dent dismounted and, touching the hem of 
Cervantes' left sleeve, said, 'Yes, yes, it is 
indeed the maimed perfection, the all-famous, 
the delightful writer, the joy and darling of 
the Muses! You are that brave Miguel.'" 

It may seem absurd to some in this cool 
and calculating twentieth century that any 
one should indulge in such vain imaginings 
as I have described — and yet, why not ^ 
All things are as we see them. I once heard 
a man — a modern man, living to-day — 
tell with a hush in his voice, and a peculiar 
light in his eye, how, walking in the outskirts 
of an unromantic town in New Jersey, he 
came suddenly upon a vigorous, bearded, 



6o THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

rather rough-looking man swinging his stick 
as he walked, and stopping often at the 
roadside and often looking up at the sky. 
I shall never forget the curious thrill in 
his voice as he said: 

"And that was Walt Whitman." 

And thus quite absurdly intoxicated by 
the possibilities of the road, I let the big, 
full afternoon slip by — I let slip the rich 
possibilities of half a hundred farms and 
scores of travelling people — and as evening 
began to fall I came to a stretch of wilder 
country with wooded hills and a dashing 
stream by the roadside. It was a fine and 
beautiful country — to look at — but the 
farms, and with them the chances of dinner, 
and a friendl}^ place to sleep, grew momen- 
tarily scarcer. Upon the hills here and there, 
indeed, were to be seen the pretentious 
summer homes of rich dwellers from the 
cities, but I looked upon them with no great 
hopefulness. 

"Of all places in the world," I said to 
myself, ''surely none could be more unfriendly 
to a man like me." 

But I amused myself with conjectures 
as to what might happen (until the adven- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 6i 

ture seemed almost worth trying) if a dusty 
man with a bag on his back should appear 
at the door of one of those well-groomed 
establishments. It came to me, indeed, with 
a sudden deep sense of understanding, that 
I should probably find there, as everywhere 
else, just men and women. And with that 
I fell into a sort of Socratic dialogue with 
myself: 

Me: Having decided that the people in 
these houses are, after all, merely men and 
women, what is the best way of reaching them? 

Myself: Undoubtedly by giving them 
something they want and have not. 

Me: But these are rich people from the 
city; what can they want that they have not? 

Myself: Believe me, of all people in the 
world those who want the most are those 
who have the most. These people are also 
consumed with desires. 

Me: And what, pray, do you suppose 
they desire ? 

Myself: They want what they have not 
got; they want the unattainable: they want 
chiefly the rarest and most precious of all 
things — a little mystery in their lives. 

"That's it!" I said aloud; "that's it! 



62 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

Mystery — the things of the spirit, the things 
above ordinary Hving — is not that the essential 
thing for which the world is sighing, and 
groaning, and longing — consciously, or un- 
consciously?" 

I have always believed that men in their 
innermost souls desire the highest, bravest, 
finest things they can hear, or see, or feel in 
all the world. Tell a man how he can in- 
crease his income and he will be grateful 
to you and soon forget you; but show him 
the highest, most mysterious things in his 
own soul and give him the word which will 
convince him that the finest things are 
really attainable, and he will love and follow 
you always. 

I now began to look with much excite- 
ment to a visit at one of the houses on the 
hill, but to my disappointment I found the 
next two that I approached still closed up, 
for the spring was not yet far enough ad- 
vanced to attract the owners to the country. 
I walked rapidly onward through the gather- 
ing twilight, but with increasing uneasi- 
ness as to the prospects for the night, and 
thus came suddenly upon the scene of an 
odd adventure. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 63 

From some distance I had seen a verit- 
able palace set high among the trees and 
overlooking a wonderful green valley — and, 
drawing nearer, I saw evidences of well- 
kept roadways and a visible effort to make 
invisible the attempt to preserve the wild 
beauty of the place. I saw, or thought I 
saw, people on the wide veranda, and I 
was sure I heard the snort of a climbing 
motor-car, but I had scarcely decided to 
make my way up to the house when I came, 
at the turning of the country road, upon a 
bit of open land laid out neatly as a garden, 
near the edge of which, nestling among the 
trees, stood a small cottage. It seemed some- 
how to belong to the great estate above 
it, and I concluded, at the first glance, 
that it was the home of some caretaker or 
gardener. 

It was a charming place to see, and espe- 
cially the plantation of trees and shrubs. 
My eye fell instantly upon a fine magnolia — 
rare in this country — which had not yet 
cast all its blossoms, and I paused for a 
moment to look at it more closely. I my- 
self have tried to raise magnolias near my 
house, and I know how difficult it is. 



64 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

As I approached nearer to the cottage 
I could see a man and woman sitting upon 
the porch in the twilight and swaying back 
and forth in rocking-chairs. I fancied — 
it may have been only a fancy — that when 
I first saw them their hands were clasped 
as they rocked side by side. 

It was indeed a charming little cottage. 
Crimson ramblers, giving promise of the 
bloom that was yet to come, climbed over 
one end of the porch, and there were fine 
dark-leaved lilac-bushes near the doorway: 
oh, a pleasant, friendly, quiet place ! 

I opened the front gate and walked straight 
in, as though I had at last reached my des- 
tination. I cannot give any idea of the 
lift of the heart with which I entered upon 
this new adventure. Without the slightest 
premeditation and not knowing what I should 
say or do, I realized that everything depended 
upon a few sentences spoken within the next 
minute or two. Believe me, this experience, 
to a man who does not know where his 
next meal is coming from, nor where he is to 
spend the night, is well worth having. It 
is a marvellous sharpener of the faculties. 

I knew, of course, just how these quiet 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 65 

people of the cottage would ordinarily regard 
an intruder whose bag and clothing must in- 
fallibly class him as a follower of the road. 
And so many followers of the road are — 
well 

As I came nearer, the man and woman 
stopped rocking, but said nothing. An old 
dog that had been sleeping on the top step 
rose slowly and stood there. 

"As I passed your garden," I said, grasp- 
ing desperately for a way of approach, 
"I saw your beautiful specimen of the 
magnolia tree — the one still in blossom. 
I myself have tried to grow magnolias — 
but with small success — and I'm making 
bold to inquire what variety you are so 
successful with." 

It was a shot in the air — but I knew 
from what I had seen that they must be 
enthusiastic gardeners. The man glanced 
around at the magnolia with evident pride, 
and was about to answer when the woman 
rose and with a pleasant, quiet cordiality 
said: 

"Won't you step up and have a chair?" 

I swung my bag from my shoulder and 
took the proffered seat. As I did so I saw, 



66 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

on the table just behind me a number of 
magazines and books — books of unusual 
sizes and shapes, indicating that they were 
not mere summer novels. 

"They like books!" I said to myself with 
a sudden rise of spirits. 

*'I have tried magnolias, too," said the 
man, "but this is the only one that has 
been really successful. It is a Chinese white 
magnolia." 

"The one Downing describes.^" I asked. 

This was also a random shot, but I con- 
jectured that if they loved both books and 
gardens they would know Downing — the 
Bible of the gardener. And if they did, why, 
we belonged to the same church. 

"The very same," exclaimed the woman; 
"it was Downing's enthusiasm for the Chinese 
magnolia which led us first to try it." 

With that, like true disciples, we fell 
into great talk of Downing, at first all in 
praise of him, and later — for may not 
the faithful be permitted latitude in their 
comments so long as it is all within the 
cloister? — we indulged in a bit of higher 
criticism. 

"It won't do," said the man, "to follow 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 67 

too slavishly every detail of practice as rec- 
ommended by Downing. We have learned 
a good many things since the forties." 

''The fact is," I said, "no literal-minded 
man should be trusted with Downing." 

"Any more than with the Holy Scrip- 
tures," exclaimed the woman. 

"Exactly!" I responded with the greatest 
enthusiasm; "exactly! We go to him for 
inspiration, for fundamental teachings, for 
the great literature and poetry of the art. 
Do you remember," I asked, "that passage 
in which Downing quotes from some old 
Chinaman upon the true secret of the pleas- 
ures of a garden ?" 

"Do we?" exclaimed the man, jumping 
up instantly; "do we? Just let me get the 
book " 

With that he went into the house and 
came back immediately bringing a lamp in 
one hand — for it had grown pretty dark — 
and a familiar, portly, blue-bound book in 
the other. While he was gone the woman 
said: 

"You have touched Mr. Vedder in his 
weakest spot." 

"I know of no combination in this world," 



68 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

said I, ''so certain to produce a happy heart 
as good books and a farm or garden." 

Mr. Vedder, having returned, shpped on his 
spectacles, sat forward on the edge of his 
rocking-chair, and opened the book with pious 
hands. 

"I'll find it," he said. "I can put my 
finger right on it." 

"You'll find it," said Mrs. Vedder, "in 
the chapter on 'Hedges.' " 

"You are wrong, my dear," he responded, 
"it is in 'Mistakes of Citizens in Country 
Life.'" 

He turned the leaves eagerly. 

"No," he said, "here it is in 'Rural Taste.' 
Let me read you the passage, Mr. " 

"Grayson." 

" — Mr. Grayson. The Chinaman's name 
was Lieu-tscheu. 'What is it,' asks this 
old Chinaman, 'that we seek in the pleasure of 
a garden? It has always been agreed that 
these plantations should make men amends for 
living at a distance from what would be 
their more congenial and agreeable dwelling- 
place — in the midst of nature, free and 
unrestrained.'" 

"That's it," I exclaimed, "and the old 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 69 

Chinaman was right! A garden excuses civ- 
iHzation." 

"It's what brought us here," said Mrs. 
Vedder. 

With that we fell into the liveliest dis- 
cussion of gardening and farming and coun- 
try life in all their phases, resolving that 
while there were bugs and blights, and 
droughts and floods, yet upon the whole 
there was no life so completely satisfying 
as life in which one may watch daily the 
unfolding of natural life. 

A hundred things we talked about freely 
that had often risen dimly in my own mind 
almost to the point — but not quite — of 
spilling over into articulate form. The mar- 
vellous thing about good conversation is 
that it brings to birth so many half-realized 
thoughts of our own — besides sowing the 
seed of innumerable other thought-plants. 
How they enjoyed their garden, those two, 
and not only the garden itself, but all the 
lore and poetry of gardening! 

We had been talking thus an hour or 
more when, quite unexpectedly, I had what 
was certainly one of the most amusing ad- 
ventures of my whole life. I can scarcely 



70 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

think of it now without a thrill of pleasure. 
I have had pay for my work in many ways, 
but never such a reward as this. 

''By the way," said Mr. Vedder, "we 
have recently come across a book which 
is full of the spirit of the garden as we have 
long known it, although the author is not 
treating directly of gardens, but of farming and 
of human nature." 

"It is really all one subject," I inter- 
rupted. 

"Certainly," said Mr. Vedder, "but many 
gardeners are nothing but gardeners. Well, 
the book to which I refer is called 'Adventures 

in Contentment,' and is by Why, by 

a man of your own name!" 

With that Mr. Vedder reached for a book 
— a familiar-looking book — on the table, 
but Mrs. Vedder looked at me. I give you 
my word, my heart turned entirely over, 
and in a most remarkable way righted 
itself again; and I saw Roman candles and 
Fourth of July rockets in front of my eyes. 
Never in all my experience was I so com- 
pletely bowled over. I felt like a small boy 
who has been caught in the pantry with one 
hand in the jam-pot — and plenty of jam 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 71 

on his nose. And like that small boy I 
enjoyed the jam, but did not like being 
caught at it. 

Mr. Vedder had no sooner got the book 
in his hand than I saw Mrs. Vedder rising 
as though she had seen a spectre, and pointing 
dramatically at me, she exclaimed: 

''You are David Grayson!" 

I can say truthfully now that I know how 
the prisoner at the bar must feel when the 
judge, leaning over his desk, looks at him 
sternly and says: 

"I declare you guilty of the offence as 

charged, and sentence you " and so on, 

and so on. 

Mr. Vedder stiffened up, and I can see 
him yet looking at me through his glasses. 
I must have looked as foolishly guilty as 
any man ever looked, for Mr. Vedder said 
promptly: 

"Let me take you by the hand, sir. We 
know you, and have known you for a long 



time." 



I shall not attempt to relate the conver- 
sation which followed, nor tell of the keen 
joy I had in it — after the first cold plunge. 
We found that we had a thousand common 



72 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

interests and enthusiasms. I had to tell 
them of my farm, and why I had left it tem- 
porarily, and of the experiences on the road. 
No sooner had I related what had befallen 
me at the Stanleys' than Mrs. Vedder dis- 
appeared into the house and came out again 
presently with a tray loaded with cold meat, 
bread, a pitcher of fine milk, and other good 
things. 

"I shall not offer any excuses," said I, 
"I'm hungry," and with that I laid in, 
Mr. Vedder helping with the milk, and all 
three of us talking as fast as ever we could. 

It was nearly midnight when at last Mr. 
Vedder led the way to the immaculate little 
bedroom where I spent the night. 

The next morning I awoke early and, 
quietly dressing, slipped down to the garden 
and walked about among the trees and the 
shrubs and the flower-beds. The sun was 
just coming up over the hill, the air was full 
of the fresh odours of morning, and the orioles 
and cat-birds were singing. 

In the back of the garden I found a charming 
rustic arbour with seats around a little 
table. And here I sat down to listen to the 
morning concert, and I saw, cut or carved 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 73 

upon the table, this verse, which so pleased 
me that I copied it in my book: 



A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! 

Rose plot, 

Fringed pool, 

Ferned grot — 
The^veriest school of peace; and yet 

the fool ' 

Contends that God is not — 
Not God! in gardens? when the even 
is cool? 

Nay, but I have a sign, 
'Tis very sure God walks in mine. 

I looked about after copying this verse, 
and said aloud: 

"I like this garden: I like these Vedders." 

And with that I had a moment of wild 
enthusiasm. 

"I will come," I said, *'and buy a little 
garden next them, and bring Harriet, and 
we will live here always. What's a farm 
compared with a friend?" 

But with that I thought of the Scotch 
preacher, and of Horace, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Starkweather, and I knew I could never 
leave the friends at home. 

*'It's astonishing how many fine people 



74 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

there are in this world," I said aloud; "one 
can't escape them!" 

"Good morning, David Grayson," I heard 
some one saying, and glancing up I saw Mrs. 
Vedder at the doorway. "Are you hungry?" 

"I am always hungry," I said. 

Mr. Vedder came out and linking his arm 
in mine and pointing out various spireas 
and Japanese barberries, of which he was 
very proud, we walked into the house to- 
gether. 

I did not think of it especially at the 
time — Harriet says I never see anything 
really worth while, by which she means 
dishes, dresses, doilies, and such like — 
but as I remembered afterward the table 
that Mrs. Vedder set was wonderfully dainty 
— dainty not merely with flowers (with 
which it was loaded), but with the quality 
of the china and silver. It was plainly the 
table of no ordinary gardener or caretaker — 
but this conclusion did not come to me until 
afterward, for as I remember it, we were in a 
deep discussion of fertilizers. 

Mrs. Vedder cooked and served breakfast 
herself, and did it with a skill almost equal 
to Harriet's — so skilfully that the talk went 




GLANCING UP, I SAW MRS. VEDDER AT THE DOORWAY 



76 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

on and we never once heard the machinery 
of service. 

After breakfast we all went out into the 
garden, Mrs. Vedder in an old straw hat 
and a big apron, and Mr. Vedder in a pair of 
old brown overalls. Two men had appeared 
from somewhere, and were digging in the 
vegetable garden. After giving them certain 
directions Mr. Vedder and I both found five- 
tined forks and went into the rose garden and 
began turning over the rich soil, while Mrs. 
Vedder, with pruning-shears, kept near us, 
cutting out the dead wood. 

It was one of the charming forenoons of 
my life. This pleasant work, spiced with 
the most interesting conversation and inter- 
rupted by a hundred little excursions into 
other parts of the garden, to see this or that 
wonder of vegetation, brought us to dinner- 
time before we fairly knew it. 

About the middle of the afternoon I 
made the next discovery. I heard first the 
choking cough of a big motor-car in the 
country road, and a moment later it stopped 
at our gate. I thought I saw the Vedders 
exchanging significant glances. A number 
of merry young people tumbled out, and an 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD ^y 

especially pretty girl of about twenty came 
running through the garden. 

"Mother," she exclaimed, "you must come 
with us!" 

"I can't, I can't," said Mrs. Vedder, 
"the roses must be pruned — and see! The 
azaleas are coming into bloom." 

With that she presented me to her daughter. 

And, then, shortly, for it could no longer be 
concealed, I learned that Mr. and Mrs. 
Vedder were not the caretakers but the owners 
of the estate and of the great house I had 
seen on the hill. That evening, with an air 
almost of apology, they explained to me how 
it all came about. 

"We first came out here," said Mrs. 
Vedder, "nearly twenty years ago, and built 
the big house on the hill. But the more we 
came to know of country life the more we 
wanted to get down into it. We found it 
impossible up there — so many unnecessary 
things to see to and care for — and we 
couldn't — we didn't see " 

"The fact is," Mr. Vedder put in, "we 
were losing touch with each other." 

"There is nothing like a big house," said 
Mrs. Vedder, "to separate a man and his wife." 



78 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"So we came down here," said Mr. 
Vedder, "built this little cottage, and have 
developed this garden mostly with our own 
hands. We would have sold the big place 
long ago if it hadn't been for our friends. 
They like it." 

"I have never heard a more truly romantic 
story," said I. 

And it was romantic: these fine people 
escaping from too many possessions, too much 
property, to the peace and quietude of a gar- 
den where they could be lovers again. 

"It seems, sometimes," said Mrs. Vedder, 
"that I never really beHeved in God until 
we came down here " 

"I saw the verse on the table in your 
arbour," said I. 

"And it is true," said Mr. Vedder. "We 
got a long, long way from God for many 
years: here we seem to get back to Him." 

I had fully intended to take the road 
again that afternoon, but how could any 
one leave such people as those .^^ We talked 
again late that night, but the next morning, 
at the leisurely Sunday breakfast, I set my 
hour of departure with all the firmness I 
could command. I left them, indeed, before 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 79 

ten o'clock that forenoon. I shall never 
forget the parting. They walked with me 
to the top of the hill, and there we stopped 
and looked back. We could see the cottage 
half hidden among the trees, and the little 
opening that the precious garden made. 
For a time we stood there quite silent. 

"Do you remember," I said presently, 
"that character in Homer who was a friend 
of men and lived in a house by the side of 
the road? I shall always think of you as 
friends of men — you took in a dusty traveller. 
And I shall never forget your house by the 
side of the road." 

"The House by the Side of the Road — 
you have christened it anew, David Grayson," 
exclaimed Mrs. Vedder. 

And so we parted like old friends, and 
I left them to return to their garden, where 
" 'tis very sure God walks." 



I AM A SPECTATOR OF A MIGHTY 

BATTLE, IN WHICH CHRISTIAN 

AGAIN MEETS APOLLYON 









...,..^" 'f^i^'"^'^. ^>^ ■ -js^ j' 



#-.^<^"' 



CHAPTER IV 

I AM A SPECTATOR OF A MIGHTY 

BATTLE, IN WHICH CHRISTIAN 

AGAIN MEETS APOLLYON 

IT IS one of the prime joys of the long road 
that no two days are ever remotely 
aHke — no two hours even; and sometimes a 
day that begins calmly will end with the 
most stirring events. 

It was thus, indeed, with that perfect 
spring Sunday when I left my friends, the 
Vedders, and turned my face again to the 
open country. It began as quietly as any 
Sabbath morning of my life, but what an 
end it had! I would have travelled a thou- 

^2, 



§4 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

sand miles for the adventures which a boun- 
teous road that day spilled carelessly into 
my willing hands. 

I can give no adequate reason why it 
should be so, but there are Sunday mornings 
in the spring — at least in our country — 
which seem to put on, like a Sabbath gar- 
ment, an atmosphere of divine quietude. 
Warm, soft, clear, but, above all, immeas- 
urably serene. 

Such was that Sunday morning; and I 
was no sooner well afoot than I yielded to 
the ingratiating mood of the day. Usually 
I am an active walker, loving the sense of 
quick motion and the stir it imparts to 
both body and mind, but that morning I 
found myself loitering, looking widely about 
me, and enjoying the lesser and quieter 
aspects of nature. It was a fine wooded 
country in which I found myself, and I soon 
struck off the beaten road and took to the 
forest and the fields. In places the ground 
was almost covered with meadow-rue, like 
green shadows on the hillsides, not yet In 
seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long 
green grass of the meadows shone the yellow 
star-flowers, and the* sweet-flags were bloom- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 85 

mg along the marshy edges of the ponds. 
The violets had disappeared, but they were 
succeeded by wild geraniums and rank-grow- 
ing vetches. 

I remember that I kept thinking from 
time to time, all the forenoon, as my mind 
went back swiftly and warmly to the two 
fine friends from whom I had so recently 
parted: 

How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, 
I must tell the Vedders that. And two or 
three times I found myself in animated con- 
versations with them in which I generously 
supplied all three parts. It may be true 
for some natures, as Leonardo said, that 
"if you are alone you belong wholly to your- 
self; if you have a companion, you belong 
only half to yourself"; but it is certainly 
not so with me. With me friendship never 
divides: it multiplies. A friend always makes 
me more than I am, better than I am, bigger 
than I am. We two make four, or fifteen, 
or forty. 

Well, I loitered through the fields and 
woods for a long time that Sunday forenoon, 
not knowing in the least that Chance held 
me close by the hand and was leading me 



86 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

onward to great events. I knew, of course, 
that I had yet to find a place for the night, 
and that this might be difficult on Sunday, 
and yet I spent that forenoon as a man 
spends his immortal youth — with a glorious 
disregard for the future. 

Some time after noon — for the sun was 
high and the day was growing much warmer 
— I turned from the road, climbed an in- 
viting little hill, and chose a spot in an old 
meadow in the shade of an apple tree, and 
there I lay down on the grass and looked up 
into the dusky shadows of the branches 
above me. I could feel the soft airs on my 
face; I could hear the buzzing of bees in 
the meadow flowers, and by turning my 
head just a little I could see the slow fleecy 
clouds, high up, drifting across the perfect 
blue of the sky. And the scent of the fields 
in spring ! — he who has known it, even 
once, may indeed die happy. 

Men worship God in various ways: it 
seemed to me that Sabbath morning, as 
I lay quietly there in the warm silence of 
midday, that I was truly worshipping God. 
That Sunday morning everything about me 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 87 

seemed somehow to be a miracle — a mir- 
acle gratefully accepted and explainable only 
by the presence of God. There was another 
strange, deep feeling which I had that morning, 
which I have had a few other times in my 
life at the rare heights of experience — I 
hesitate always when I try to put down the 
deep, deep things of the human heart — a 
feeling immeasurably real, that if I should 
turn my head quickly I should indeed see 
that Immanent Presence. . . . 

One of the few birds I know that sings 
through the long midday is the vireo. The 
vireo sings when otherwise the woods are 
still. You do not see him; you cannot 
find him; but you know he is there. And 
his singing is wild, and shy, and mystical. 
Often it haunts you like the memory of 
some former happiness. That day I heard 
the vireo singing. . . . 

I don't know how long I lay there under 
the tree in the meadow, but presently I 
heard, from no great distance, the sound of a 
church-bell. It was ringing for the afternoon 
service which among the farmers of this part 
of the country often takes the place, in sum- 
mer, of both morning and evening services. 



88 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"I believe I'll go," I said, thinking first 
of all, I confess, of the interesting people I 
might meet there. 

But when I sat up and looked about me 
the desire faded, and rummaging in my bag 
I came across my tin whistle. Immediately 
I began practising a tune called "Sweet 
Afton," which I had learned when a boy; 
and, as I played, my mood changed swiftly, 
and I began to smile at myself as a tragi- 
cally serious person, and to think of pat 
phrases with which to characterize the ex- 
ecrableness of my attempts upon the tin 
whistle. I should have liked some one near 
to joke with. 

Long ago I made a motto about boys: 
Look for a boy anywhere. Never be sur- 
prised when you shake a cherry tree if a 
boy drops out of it; never be disturbed 
when you think yourself in complete solitude 
if you discover a boy peering out at you from 
a fence corner. 

I had not been playing long before I 
saw two boys looking at me from out of 
a thicket by the roadside; and a moment 
later two others appeared. 

Instantly I switched into "Marching 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 89 

Through Georgia," and began to nod my 
head and tap my toe in the liveliest fash- 
ion. Presently one boy climbed up on the 
fence, then another, then a third. I con- 
tinued to play. The fourth boy, a little 
chap, ventured to climb up on the fence. 

They were bright-faced, tow-headed lads, 
all in Sunday clothes. 

"It's hard luck," said I, taking my whistle 
from my lips, "to have to wear shoes and 
stockings on a warm Sunday like this." 

"You bet it is!" said the bold leader. 

"In that case," said I, "I will play 'Yan- 
kee Doodle.' " 

I played. All the boys, including the 
little chap, came up around me, and two 
of them sat down quite familiarly on the 
grass. I never had a more devoted audience. 
I don't know what interesting event might 
have happened next, for the bold leader, 
who stood nearest, was becoming dangerously 
inflated with questions — I don't know what 
might have happened had we not been 
interrupted by the appearance of a Spectre 
in Black. It appeared before us there in 
the broad daylight in the middle of a sunny 
afternoon while we were playing "Yankee 



90 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

Doodle." First I saw the top of a black 
hat rising over the rim of the hill. This 
was followed quickly by a black tie, a long 
black coat, black trousers, and, finally, black 
shoes. I admit I was shaken, but being a 
person of iron nerve in facing such phenomena 
I continued to play "Yankee Doodle." In 
spite of this counter-attraction, toward which 
all four boys turned uneasy glances, I held 
my audience. The Black Spectre, with a 
black book under its arm, drew nearer. 
Still I continued to play and nod my head 
and tap my toe. I felt like some modern 
Pied Piper piping away the children of these 
modern hills — piping them away from older 
people who could not understand them. 

I could see an accusing look on the Spec- 
tre's face. I don't know what put it into 
my head, and I had no sooner said it than 
I was sorry for my levity, but the figure 
with the sad garments there in the matchless 
and triumphant spring day affected me with 
a curious sharp impatience. Had any one 
the right to look out so dolefully upon such 
a day and such a scene of simple happiness 
as this.f^ So I took my whistle from my lips 
and asked: 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 91 

"Is God dead?" 

I shall never forget the indescribable look 
of horror and astonishment that swept over 
the young man's face. 

"What do you mean, sir?" he asked with 
an air of stern authority which surprised 
me. His calling for the moment lifted him 
above himself: it was the Church which 
spoke. 

I was on my feet in an instant, regret- 
ting the pain I had given him; and yet it 
seemed worth while now, having made my 
inadvertent remark, to show him frankly 
what lay in my mind. Such things some- 
times help men. 

"I meant no offence, sir," I said, "and 
I apologize for my flummery, but when 
I saw you coming up the hill, looking so 
gloomy and disconsolate on this bright 
day, as though you disapproved of God's 
world, the question slipped out before I 
knew it." 

My words evidently struck deep down 
into some disturbed inner consciousness, for 
he asked — and his words seemed to slip 
out before he thought: 

"Is that the way I impressed you?" 



92 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I found my heart going out strongly to- 
ward him. "Here," I thought to myself, 
"is a man in trouble." 

I took a good long look at him. He was 
still a young man, though worn-looking — 
and sad, as I now saw it, rather than gloomy 
— with the sensitive lips and the unworldly 
look one sees sometimes in the faces of 
saints. His black coat was immaculately 
neat, but the worn button-covers and the 
shiny lapels told their own eloquent story. 
Oh, it seemed to me I knew him as well as 
if every incident of his life were written 
plainly upon his high, pale forehead ! I have 
lived long in a country neighbourhood, and 
I knew him — poor flagellant of the rural 
church — I knew how he groaned under the 
sins of a community too comfortably will- 
ing to cast all its burdens on the Lord, or 
on the Lord's accredited local representative. 
I inferred also the usual large family and the 
low salary (scandalously unpaid) and the fre- 
quent moves from place to place. 

Unconsciously heaving a sigh the young 
man turned partly aside and said to me in a 
low, gentle voice : 

"You are detaining my boys, from church." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 93 

"I am very sorry," I said, "and I will de- 
tain them no longer," and with that I put 
aside my whistle, took up my bag and moved 
down the hill with them. 

"The fact is," I said, "when I heard 
your bell I thought of going to church my- 
self." 

"Did you?" he asked eagerly. "Did 
you?" 

I could see that my proposal of going 
to church had instantly affected his spirits. 
Then he hesitated abruptly with a sidelong 
glance at my bag and rusty clothing. I 
could see exactly what was passing in his 
mind. 

"No," I said, smiling, as though answering 
a spoken question, "I am not exactly what 
you would call a tramp." 

He flushed. 

" I didn't mean — I want you to come. 
That's what a church is for. If I thought " 

But he did not tell me what he thought; 
and, though he walked quietly at my side, 
he was evidently deeply disturbed. Some- 
thing of his discouragement I sensed even 
then, and I don't think I was ever sorrier 
for a man in my life than I was for him at 



94 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

that moment. Talk about the sufferings of 
sinners! I wonder if they are to be com- 
pared with the trials of the saints? 

So we approached the little white church, 
and caused, I am certain, a tremendous 
sensation. Nowhere does the unpredictable, 
the unusual, excite such confusion as in that 
settled institution — the church. 

I left my bag in the vestibule, where I 
have no doubt it was the object of much 
inquiring and suspicious scrutiny, and took 
my place in a convenient pew. It was a 
small church with an odd air of domesticity, 
and the proportion of old ladles and children 
in the audience was pathetically large. As 
a ruddy, vigorous, out-of-door person, with 
the dust of life upon him, I felt distinctly 
out of place. 

I could pick out easily the Deacon, the 
Old Lady Who Brought Flowers, the Presi- 
dent of the Sewing Circle, and, above all, 
the Chief Pharisee, sitting in his high place. 
The Chief Pharisee — his name I learned 
was Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know 
then that I was soon to make his acquain- 
tance) — the Chief Pharisee looked as hard 
as nails, a middle-aged man with stiff white 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 95 

chin-whiskers, small, round, sharp eyes, and 
a pugnacious jaw. 

"That man," said I to myself, "runs 
this church," and instantly I found myself 
looking upon him as a sort of personification 
of the troubles I had seen in the minister's 
eyes. 

I shall not attempt to describe the ser- 
vice in detail. There was a discouraging 
droop and quaver in the singing, and the 
mournful-looking deacon who passed the 
collection-plate seemed inured to disappoint- 
ment. The prayer had in it a note of de- 
spairing appeal which fell like a cold hand 
upon one's living soul. It gave one the 
impression that this was indeed a miserable, 
dark, despairing world, which deserved to be 
wrathfully destroyed, and that this miserable 
world was full of equally miserable, broken, 
sinful, sickly people. 

The sermon was a little better, for some- 
where hidden within him this pale young 
man had a spark of the divine fire, but it 
was so dampened by the atmosphere of the 
church that it never rose above a pale lumi- 
nosity. 

I found the service indescribably depress- 



96 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

ing. I had an impulse to rise up and cry 
out — almost anything to shock these people 
into opening their eyes upon real life. In- 
deed, though I hesitate about setting it down 
here, I was filled for some time with the live- 
liest imaginings of the following serio-comic 
enterprise: 

I would step up the aisle, take my place 
in front of the Chief Pharisee, wag my 
finger under his nose, and tell him a thing 
or two about the condition of the church. 

"The only live thing here," I would tell 
him, "is the spark in that pale minister's 
soul; and you're doing your best to smother 
that." 

And I fully made up my mind that when 
he answered back in his chief-pharisaical 
way I would gently but firmly remove him 
from his seat, shake him vigorously two or 
three times (men's souls have often been 
saved with less!), deposit him flat in the 
aisle, and — yes — stand on him while I 
elucidated the situation to the audience at 
large. While I confined this amusing and 
interesting project to the humours of the 
imagination I am still convinced that some- 
thing of the sort would have helped enormously 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 97 

in clearing up the religious and moral atmos- 
phere of the place. 

I had a wonderful sensation of relief 
when at last I stepped out again into the 
clear afternoon sunshine and got a reviving 
glimpse of the smiling green hills and the 
quiet fields and the sincere trees — and 
felt the welcome of the friendly road. 

I would have made straight for the 
hills, but the thought of that pale minister 
held me back, and I waited quietly there 
under the trees till he came out. He was 
plainly looking for me, and asked me to 
wait and walk along with him, at which his 
four boys, whose acquaintance I had made 
under such thrilling circumstances earlier 
in the day, seemed highly delighted, and 
waited with me under the tree and told me a 
hundred important things about a certain 
calf, a pig, a kite, and other things at home. 

Arriving at the minister's gate, I was 
invited in with a whole-heartedness that 
was altogether charming. The minister's wife, 
a faded-looking woman who had once pos- 
sessed a delicate sort of prettiness, was 
waiting for us on the steps with a fine chubby 
baby on her arm — number five. 



98 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

The home was much the sort of place I 
had imagined — a small house undesirably 
located (but cheap!), with a few straggling 
acres of garden and meadow upon which the 
minister and his boys were trying with 
inexperienced hands to piece out their in- 
adequate living. At the very first glimpse 
of the garden I wanted to throw off my coat 
and go at it. 

And yet — and yet — what a wonderful 
thing love is! There was, after all, some- 
thing incalculable, something pervasively 
beautiful about this poor household. The 
moment the minister stepped inside his 
own door he became a different and livelier 
person. Something boyish crept into his 
manner, and a new look came into the eyes of 
his faded wife that made her almost pretty 
again. And the fat, comfortable baby rolled 
and gurgled about on the floor as happily as 
though there had been two nurses and a 
governess to look after him. As for the 
four boys, I have never seen healthier or 
happier ones. 

I sat with them at their Sunday-evening 
luncheon. As the minister bowed his head 
to say grace I felt him clasp my hand on 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 99 

one side while the oldest boy clasped my 
hand on the other, and thus, linked together, 
and accepting the stranger utterly, the family 
looked up to God. 

There was a fine, modest gayety about 
the meal. In front of Mrs. Minister stood 
a very large yellow bowl filled with whkt 
she called rusk — a preparation unfamiliar 
to me, made by browning and crushing the 
crusts of bread and then rolling them down 
into a coarse meal. A bowl of this, with 
sweet, rich, yellow milk (for they kept their 
own cow), made one of the most appetizing 
dishes that ever I ate. It was downright 
good: it gave one the unalloyed aroma of the 
sweet new milk and the satisfying taste of the 
crisp bread. 

Nor have I ever enjoyed a more perfect 
hospitality. I have been in many a richer 
home where there was not a hundredth part 
of the true gentility — the gentility of unapolo- 
gizing simplicity and kindness. 

And after it was over and cleared away 
- — the minister himself donning a long apron 
and helping his wife — and the chubby 
baby put to bed, we all sat around the table 
in the gathering twilight. 



loo THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I think men perish sometimes from sheer 
untalked talk. For lack of a creative lis- 
tener they gradually fill up with unexpressed 
emotion. Presently this emotion begins to 
ferment, and finally — bang! — they blow 
up, burst, disappear in thin air. In all that 
community I suppose there was no one but 
the little faded wife to whom the minister 
dared open his heart, and I think he found me 
a godsend. All I really did was to look from 
one to the other and put in here and there 
an inciting comment or ask an understanding 
question. After he had told me his situa- 
tion and the difficulties which confronted 
him and his small church, he exclaimed 
suddenly: 

"A minister should by rights be a leader 
not only inside of his church, but outside of 
it in the community." 

"You are right," I exclaimed with great 
earnestness; "you are right." 

And with that I told him of our own 
Scotch preacher and how he led and moulded 
our community; and as I talked I could see 
him actually growing, unfolding, under my 
eyes. 

"Why," said I, "you not only ought to 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD loi 

be the moral leader of this community, but 
you are!" 

"That's what I tell him," exclaimed his 
wife. 

"But he persists in thinking, doesn't he, 
that he is a poor sinner?" 

"He thinks it too much," she laughed. -^ 

"Yes, yes," he said, as much to himself as 
to us, "a minister ought to be a fighter!" 

It was beautiful, the boyish flush which 
now came into his face and the light that 
came into his eyes. I should never have 
identified him with the Black Spectre of 
the afternoon. 

"Why," said I, " you are a fighter; you're 
fighting the greatest battle In the world to- 
day — the only real battle — the battle for 
the spiritual view of life." 

Oh, I knew exactly what was the trouble 
with his religion — at least the religion which, 
under the pressure of that church, he felt 
obliged to preach! It v/as the old, groaning, 
denying, resisting religion. It was the sort 
of religion which sets a man apart and assures 
him that the entire universe In the guise of 
the Powers of Darkness Is leagued against 
him. What he needed was a reviving draught 



I02 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

of the new faith which affirms, accepts, re- 
joices, which feels the universe triumphantly 
behind it. And so whenever the minister 
told me what he ought to be — for he too 
sensed the new impulse — I merely told him 
he was just that. He needed only this little 
encouragment to unfold. 

"Yes," said he again, ''I am the real moral 
leader here." 

At this I saw Mrs. Minister nodding her 
head vigorously. 

"It's you," she said, "and not Mr. Nash, 
who should lead this community." 

How a woman loves concrete applications! 
She is your only true pragmatist. If a phil- 
osophy will not work, says she, why bother 
with it.f* 

The minister rose quickly from his chair, 
threw back his head, and strode quickly up 
and down .the room. 

"You are right," said he; "and I will 
lead it. I'll have my farmers' meetings as I 
planned." 

It may have been the effect of the lamp- 
light, but it seemed to me that little Mrs. 
Minister, as she glanced up at him, looked 
actually pretty. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 103 

The minister continued to stride up and 
down the room with his chin in the air. 

''Mr. Nash," said she in a low voice to 
me, "is always trying to hold him down and 
keep him back. My husband wants to do 
the great things" — — wistfully. 

"By every right," the minister was re- 
peating quite oblivious of our presence, "I 
should lead this people." 

"He sees the weakness of the church," 
she continued, "as well as any one, and he 
wants to start some vigorous community 
work — have agricultural meetings and boys' 
clubs, and lots of things like that — but 
Mr. Nash says it is no part of a minister's 
work: that it cheapens religion. He says 
that when a parson — Mr. Nash always 
calls him parson, and I just loathe that name 
— has preached, and prayed, and visited the 
sick, that's enough for himy 

At this very moment a step sounded 
upon the walk, and an instant later a figure 
appeared in the doorway. 

"Why, Mr. Nash," exclaimed little Mrs. 
Minister, exhibiting that astonishing gift 
of swift recovery which is the possession 
of even the simplest women, "come right in." 



104 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

It was some seconds before the minister 
could come down from the heights and 
greet Mr. Nash. As for me, I was never 
more interested in my Hfe. 

'*Now," said I to myself, "we shall see 
Christian meet Apollyon." 

As soon as Mrs. Minister lighted the 
lamp I was introduced to the great man. 
He looked at me sharply with his small, 
round eyes, and said: 

"Oh, you are the — the man who was in 
church this afternoon." 

I admitted it, and he looked around at 
the minister with an accusing expression. 
He evidently did not approve of me, nor 
could I wholly blame him, for I knew well 
how he, as a rich farmer, must look upon 
a rusty man of the road like me. I should 
have liked dearly to cross swords with him 
myself, but greater events were imminent. 

In no time at all the discussion, which 
had evidently been broken off at some 
previous meeting, concerning the proposed 
farmers' assembly at the church, had taken 
on a really lively tone. Mr. Nash was 
evidently in the somewhat irritable mood 
with which important people may sometimes 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 105 

indulge themselves, for he bit off his words in 
a way that was calculated to make any but 
an unusually meek and saintly man exceed- 
ingly uncomfortable. But the minister, with 
the fine, high humility of those whose passion 
is for great or true things, was quite oblivious 
to the harsh words. Borne along by^ an 
irresistible enthusiasm, he told in glowing 
terms what his plan would mean to the 
community, how the people needed a new 
social and civic spirit — a "neighbourhood 
religious feeling" he called it. And as he 
talked, his face flushed and his eyes shone 
with the pure fire of a great purpose. But 
I could see that all this enthusiasm impressed 
the practical Mr. Nash as mere moonshine. 
He grew more and more uneasy. Finally 
he brought his hand down with a resound- 
ing thwack upon his knee, and said in a 
high, cutting voice: 

"I don't believe in any such newfangled 
nonsense. It ain't none of a parson's business 
what the community does. You're hired, 
ain't you, an ' paid to run the church ? That's 
the end of it. We ain't goin' to have any 
mixin' of religion an' farmin' in this neigh- 
bourhood." 



io6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

My eyes were on the pale man of God. 
I felt as though a human soul were being 
weighed in the balance. What would he do 
now? What was he worth really as a man as 
well as a minister? 

He paused a moment with downcast eyes. 
I saw little Mrs. Minister glance at him — 
once — wistfully. He rose from his place, 
drew himself up to his full height — I shall 
not soon forget the look on his face — and 
uttered these amazing words : 

"Martha, bring the ginger-jar." 

Mrs. Minister, without a word, went to 
a little cupboard on the farther side of the 
room and took down a brown earthenware 
jar, which she brought over and placed on 
the table, Mr. Nash following her move- 
ments with astonished eyes. No one spoke. 

The minister took the jar in his hands 
as he might the communion-cup just before 
saying the prayer of the sacrament. 

"Mr. Nash," said he in a loud voice, "I've 
decided to hold that farmers' meeting." 

Before Mr. Nash could reply the minister 
seated himself and was pouring out the 
contents of the jar upon the table — 
a clatter of dimes, nickels, pennies, a few 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 107 

quarters and half dollars, and a very few 
bills. 

"Martha, just how much money is there 
here?" 

"Twenty-four dollars and sixteen cents." 

The minister put his hand into his pocket 
and, after counting out certain coins, said: 

"Here's one dollar and eighty-four cents 
more. That makes twenty-six dollars. Now, 
Mr. Nash, you're the largest contributor 
to my salary in this neighbourhood. You 
gave twenty-six dollars last year — fifty 
cents a week. It is a generous contribution, 
but I cannot take it any longer. It is 
fortunate that my wife has saved up this 
money to buy a sewing-machine, so that we 
can pay back your contribution in full." 

He paused; no one of us spoke a word. 

"Mr. Nash," he continued, and his face 
was good to see, "I am the minister here. 
I am convinced that what the community 
needs is more of a religious and social spirit, 
and I am going about getting it in the way 
the Lord leads me." 

At this I saw Mrs. Minister look up at 
her husband with such a light in her eyes 
as any man might well barter his life for 



io8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

— I could not keep my own eyes from the 
pure beauty of it. 

I knew too what this defiance meant. 
It meant that this Httle family was placing 
its all upon the altar — even the pitiful 
coins for which they had skimped and saved 
for months for a particular purpose. Talk 
of the heroism of the men who charged 
with Pickett at Gettysburg! Here was a 
courage higher and whiter than that; here 
was a courage that dared to fight alone. 

As for Mr. Nash, the face of that Chief 
Pharisee was a study. Nothing is so paralyz- 
ing to a rich man as to find suddenly that 
his money will no longer command him any 
advantage. Like all hard-shelled, practical 
people, Mr. Nash could only dominate in a 
world which recognized the same material 
supremacy that he recognized. Any one who 
insisted upon flying was lost to Mr. Nash. 

The minister pushed the little pile of 
coins toward him. 

"Take it, Mr. Nash," said he. 

At that Mr. Nash rose hastily. 

" I will not," he said gruffly. 

He paused, and looked at the minister 
with a strange expression in his small round 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



109 



eyes — was it anger, or was it fear, or could 
it have been admiration? 

''If you want to waste your time on 
iiddlin' farmers' meetings — a man that knows 







HE TURNED, REACHED FOR HIS HAT, AND THEN WENT 
OUT OF THE DOOR INTO THE DARKNESS " 

as little of farmin' as you do — why, go 
ahead for all o' me. But don't count me in." 
He turned, reached for his hat, and then 
went out of the door into the darkness. 



no THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

For a moment we all sat perfectly silent, 
then the minister rose, and said solemnly: 

"Martha, let's sing something." 

Martha crossed the room to the cottage 
organ and seated herself on the stool. 

"What shall we sing?" said she. 

"Something with fight in it, Martha," he 
responded; "something with plenty of fight 
In it." 

So we sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers, 
Marching as to War," and followed that 
up with: 

Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve 

And press with vigour on; 
A heavenly race demands thy zeal 

And an immortal crown. 



When we had finished, and as Martha 
rose from her seat, the minister impulsively 
put his hands on her shoulders, and said: 

"Martha, this is the greatest night of my 
life." 

He took a turn up and down the room, 
and then with an exultant boyish laugh 
said: 

"We'll go to town to-morrow and pick 
out that sewing-machine!" 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



III 



I remained with them that night and part 
of the following day, taking a hand with 
them in the garden, but of the events of 
that day I shall speak in another chapter. 




I PLAY THE PART OF A SPECTACLE 
PEDDLER 





CHAPTER V 

I PLAY THE PART OF A SPECTACLE- 
PEDDLER 

YESTERDAY was exactly the sort of a 
day I love best — a spicy, unexpected, 
amusing day — a day crowned with a droll 
adventure. 

I cannot at all account for it, but it seems 
to me I take the road each morning with a 
livelier mind and keener curiosity. If you 
were to watch me narrowly these days 
you would see that I am slowly shedding 

IIS 



ii6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

my years. I suspect that some one of the 
clear hill streams from which I have been 
drinking (lying prone on my face) was in 
reality the fountain of eternal youth. I 
shall not go back to see. 

It seems to me, when I feel like this, 
that in every least thing upon the roadside, 
or upon the hill, lurks the stuff of adventure. 
What a world it is! A mile south of here 
I shall find all that Stanley found in the 
jungles of Africa; a mile north I am Peary 
at the Pole! 

You there, brown-clad farmer on the tall 
seat of your wagon, driving townward with 
a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life 
— your life — is not all a gray smudge, as 
you think it is, but crammed, packed, loaded 
with miraculous things. I can show you 
wonders past belief in your own soul. I 
can easily convince you that you are in 
reality a poet, a hero, a true lover, a saint. 

It is because we are not humble enough 
in the presence of the divine daily fact 
that adventure knocks so rarely at our 
door. A thousand times I have had to 
learn this truth (what lesson so hard to 
learn as the lesson of humility!) and I 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 117 

suppose I shall have to learn it a thousand 
times more. This very day, straining my eyes 
to see the distant wonders of the mountains, 
I nearly missed a miracle by the roadside. 

Soon after leaving the minister and his 
family — I worked with them in their garden 
with great delight most of the forenoon — ■ 
I came, within a mile^ to the wide white 
turnpike — the Great Road. 

Now, I usually prefer the little roads, 
the little, unexpected, curving, leisurely coun- 
try roads. The sharp hills, the pleasant 
deep valleys, the bridges not too well kept, 
the verdure deep grown along old fences, 
the houses opening hospitably at the very 
roadside, all these things I love. They 
come to me with the same sort of charm and 
flavour, only vastly magnified, which I find 
often in the essays of the older writers — 
those leisurely old fellows who took time to 
write, really write. The important thing 
to me about a road, as about life and litera- 
ture, is not that it goes anywhere, but that 
it is livable while it goes. For if I were to 
arrive — and who knows that I ever shall 
arrive? — I think I should be no happier 
than I am here. 



ii8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

Thus I have commonly avoided the Great 
White Road — the broad, smooth turnpike — 
rock-bottomed and rolled by a beneficent 
State — without so much as a loitering curve 
to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am 
to laugh over, nor a sinful hill to test your 
endurance — not so much as a dreamy valley! 
It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way 
directly from some particular place to some 
other particular place — and from time to 
time a motor-car shoots in at one end of it 
and out at the other, leaving its dust to 
settle upon quiet travellers like me. 

Thus to-day when I came to the turn- 
pike I was at first for making straight across 
it and taking to the hills beyond, but at 
that very moment a motor-car whirled past 
me as I stood there, and a girl with a merry 
face waved her hand at me. I lifted my hat 
in return, and as I watched them out of 
sight I felt a curious new sense of warmth and 
friendliness there in the Great Road. 

"These are just people, too," I said aloud 
— "and maybe they really like it!" 

And with that I began laughing at myself, 
and at the whole big, amazing, interesting 
world. Here was I pitying them for their 




1 usually prefer the little roads, the little, unexpected, 
curving, leisurely country roads.'' 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 119 

benighted state, and there were they, no 
doubt, pitying me for mine! 

And with that pleasant and satisfactory 
thought in my mind and a song In my throat 
I swung into the Great Road. 

"It doesn't matter in the least," said I 
to myself, "whether a man takes hold of life 
by the great road or the little ones so long as 
he takes hold." 

And oh, it was a wonderful day! A 
day with movement in it; a day that flowed! 
In every field the farmers were at work, 
the cattle fed widely in the meadows, and 
the Great Road itself was alive with a hundred 
varied sorts of activity. Light winds stirred 
the tree-tops and rippled in the new grass; 
and from the thickets I heard the blackbirds 
crying. Everything animate and inanimate, 
that morning, seemed to have its own clear 
voice and to cry out at me for my interest, 
or curiosity, or sympathy. Under such cir- 
cumstances it could not have been long — 
nor was it long — before I came plump upon 
the first of a series of odd adventures. 

A great many people, I know, abominate 
the roadside sign. It seems to them a des- 



I20 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

ecration of nature, the intrusion of rude 
commercialism upon the perfection of natural 
beauty. But not I. I have no such feeling. 
Oh, the signs in themselves are often rude 
and unbeautiful, and I never wished my 
own barn or fences to sing the praises of 
swamproot or sarsaparilla — and yet there 
is something wonderfully human about these 
painted and pasted vociferations of the road- 
side signs; and I don't know why they are 
less "natural" in their way than a house 
or barn or a planted field of corn. They 
also tell us about life. How eagerly they 
cry out at us, "Buy me, buy me!" What 
enthusiasm they have in their own concerns, 
what boundless faith in themselves! How 
they speak of the enormous energy, activity, 
resourcefulness of human kind! 

Indeed, I like all kinds of signs. The 
autocratic warnings of the road, the musts 
and the must-nots of traffic, I observe in 
passing; and I often stand long at the cross- 
ings and look up at the finger-posts, and 
consider my limitless wealth as a traveller. 
By this road I may, at my own pleasure, 
reach the Great City; by that — who knows ? 
— the far wonders of Cathay. And I re- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 121 

spond always to the appeal which the devoted 
pilgrim paints on the rocks at the roadside: 
''Repent ye, for the kingdom of God is at 
hand," and though I am certain that the 
kingdom of God is already here, I stop 
always and repent — just a little — knowing 
that there is always room for it. At the 
entrance of the little towns, also, or in the 
squares of the villages, I stop often to read 
the signs of taxes assessed, or of political 
meetings; I see the evidences of homes 
broken up in the notices of auction sales, 
and of families bereaved in the dry and 
formal publications of the probate court. 
I pause, too, before the signs of amusements 
flaming red and yellow on the barns (boys, 
the circus is coming to town!), and I pause 
also, but no longer, to read the silent signs 
carved in stone in the little cemeteries as 
I pass. Symbols, you say? Why, they're 
the very stufi" of life. If you cannot see 
life here in the wide road, you will never 
see it at all. 

Well, I saw a sign yesterday at the road- 
side that I never saw anywhere before. 
It was not a large sign — indeed rather 
inconspicuous — consisting of a single word 



122 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

rather crudely painted in black (as by an 
amateur) upon a white board. It was nailed 
to a tree where those in swift passing cars 
could not avoid seeing it: 



REST 



I cannot describe the odd sense of enliven- 
ment, of pleasure I had when I saw this new 
sign. 

"Rest!" I exclaimed aloud. ''Indeed I 
will," and I sat down on a stone not far away. 

"Rest!" 

What a sign for this very spot! Here 
in the midst of the haste and hurry of the 
Great Road a quiet voice was saying, "Rest." 
Some one with imagination, I thought, evi- 
dently put that up; some quietist offering 
this mild protest against the breathless prog- 
ress of the age. How often I have felt 
the same way myself — as though I were 
being swept onward through life faster than 
I could well enjoy it. For nature passes the 
dishes far more rapidly than we can help 
ourselves. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 123 

Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly specu- 
lating, this may be only some cunning ad- 
vertiser with rest for sale (in these days 
even rest has its price), thus piquing the 
curiosity of the traveller for the disclosure 
which he will make a mile or so farther on. 
Or else some humourist wasting his wit upon 
the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like 
me, perhaps) to accept his ironical advice. 
But it would be well worth while, should I 
find him, to see him chuckle behind his hand* 

So I sat there, very much interested, for 
a long time, even framing a rather amus- 
ing picture in my own mind of the sort of 
person who painted these signs, deciding 
finally that he must be a zealot rather than 
a trader or humourist. (Confidentially, I 
could not make a picture of him in which he 
was not endowed with plentiful long hair!) 
As I walked onward again, I decided that 
in any guise I should like to see him, and I 
enjoyed thinking what I should say if I 
met him. A mile farther up the road I 
saw another sign exactly like the first. 

"Here he is again," I said exultantly, 
and that sign being somewhat nearer the 
ground I was able to examine it carefully 



124 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

front and back, but it bore no evidence 
of its origin. 

In the next few miles I saw two other 
signs with nothing on them but the single 
word "Rest." 

Now this excellent admonition — like much 
of the excellent admonition in this world — 
affected me perversely: it made me more 
restless than ever. I felt that I could not 
rest properly until I found out who wanted 
me to rest, and why. It opened indeed a 
limitless vista for new adventure. 

Presently, away ahead of me in the road, 
I saw a man standing near a one-horse 
wagon. He seemed to be engaged in some 
activity near the roadside, but I could not 
tell exactly what. As I hastened nearer I 
discovered that he was a short, strongly 
built, sun-bronzed man in working-clothes 
— and with the shortest of short hair. I 
saw him take a shovel from the wagon and 
begin digging. He was the road-worker. 

I asked the road-worker if he had seen 
the curious signs. He looked up at me with 
a broad smile (he had good-humoured, very 
bright blue eyes). 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 125 

"Yes," he said, "but they ain't for me." 

"Then you don't follow the advice they 
give?" 

"Not with a section like mine," said he, and 
he straightened up and looked first one way 
of the road and then the other. "I have 
from Grabow Brook, but not the bridge, to the 
top o' Sullivan Hill, and all the culverts be- 
tween, though two of 'em are by rights 
bridges. And I claim that's a job for any 
full-grown man." 

He began shovelling again in the road as if 
to prove how busy he was. There had been 
a small landslide from an open cut on one side 
and a mass of gravel and small boulders lay 
scattered on the smooth macadam. I watched 
him for a moment. I love to watch the mo- 
tions of vigorous men at work, the easy play 
of the muscles, the swing of the shoulders, 
the vigour of stoutly planted legs. He evi- 
dently considered the conversation closed, 
and I, as — well, as a dusty man of the road — • 
easily dismissed. (You have no idea, until 
you try it, what a weight of prejudice the 
man of the road has to surmount before he Is 
accepted on easy terms by the ordinary mem- 
bers of the human race.) 



126 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

A few other well-intentioned observations 
on my part having elicited nothing but 
monosyllabic replies, I put my bag down by 
the roadside and, going up to the wagon, 
got out a shovel, and without a word 
took my place at the other end of the 
landslide and began to shovel for all I was 
worth. 

I said not a word to the husky road-worker 
and pretended not to look at him, but I saw 
him well enough out of the corner of my eye. 
He was evidently astonished and interested, 
as I knew he would be: it was something 
entirely new on the road. He didn't quite 
know whether to be angry, or amused, or 
sociable. I caught him looking over at me 
several times, but I offered no response; then 
he cleared his throat and said: 

''Where you from?" 

I answered with a monosyllable which I 
knew he could not quite catch. Silence 
again for some time, during which I shovelled 
valiantly and with great inward amusement. 
Oh, there is nothing like cracking a hard 
human nut! I decided at that moment to 
have him invite me to supper. 

Finally, when I showed no signs of stopping 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 127 

my work, he himself paused and leaned on his 
shovel. I kept right on. 

"Say, partner," said he, finally, "did yon 
read those signs as you come up the road?" 

"Yes," I said, "but they weren't for me, 
either. My section's a long one, too." 

"Say, you ain't a road-worker, are you?" 
he asked eagerly. 

"Yes," said I, with a sudden inspiration, 
"that's exactly what I am — a road-worker." 

"Put her there, then, partner," he said, 
with a broad smile on his bronzed face. 

He and I struck hands, rested on our 
shovels (like old hands at it), and looked with 
understanding into each other's eyes. We 
both knew the trade and the tricks of the 
trade; all bars were down between us. The 
fact is, we had both seen and profited by the 
peculiar signs at the roadside. 

"Where's your section?" he asked easily. 

"Well," I responded after considering the 
question, "I have a very long and hard 
section. It begins at a place called Prosy 
Common — do you know it ? — and reaches 
to the top of Clear Hill. There are several 
bad spots on the way, I can tell you." 

"Don't know it," said the husky road- 



128 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

worker; "'tain't round here, is it? In the 
town of Sheldon, maybe?" 

Just at this moment, perhaps fortunately, 
for there is nothing so difficult to satisfy as 
the appetite of people for specific informa- 
tion, a motor-car whizzed past, the driver 
holding up his hand in greeting, and the 
road-worker and I responding in accord with 
the etiquette of the Great Road. 

"There he goes in the ruts again," said 
the husky road-worker. "Why is it, I'd 
like to know, that every one wants to run in 
the same i-dentical track when they've got 
the whole wide road before 'em?" 

"That's what has long puzzled me, too," I 
said. "Why will people continue to run in 
ruts?" 

"It don't seem to do no good to put up 
signs," said the road-worker. 

''Very little indeed," said I. "The fact is, 
people have got to be bumped out of most 
of the ruts they get into." 

"You're right," said he enthusiastically, 
and his voice dropped into the tone of one 
speaking to a member of the inner guild. 
"I know how to get 'em." 




T(*»«/Cs InstAf 



A MOTOR-CAR WHIZZED PAST. " THERE HE GOES IN THE 
RUTS AGAIN," SAID THE HUSKY ROAD-WORKER 



I30 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"How?" I asked in an equally mysterious 
voice. 

" I put a stone or two in the ruts ! " 

*'Do you?" I exclaimed. "I've done that 
very thing myself — many a time! Just 
place a good hard tru — I mean stone, with a 
bit of common dust sprinkled over it, in the 
middle of the rut, and they'll look out for 
that rut for some time to come." 

"Ain't it gorgeous," said the husky road- 
worker, chuckling joyfully, "to see 'em 
bump?" 

"It is," said I — "gorgeous." 

After that, shovelling part of the time 
In a leisurely way, and part of the time 
responding to the urgent request of the 
signs by the roadside (it pays to advertise!), 
the husky road-worker and I discussed many 
great and important subjects, all, however, 
curiously related to roads. Working all day 
long with his old horse, removing obstructions, 
draining out the culverts, filling ruts and 
holes with new stone, and repairing the 
damage of rain and storm, the road-worker 
was filled with a world of practical information 
covering roads and road-making. And hav- 
ing learned that I was of the same calling 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 131 

we exchanged views with the greatest enthu- 
siasm. It was astonishing to see how nearly 
in agreement we were as to what constituted 
an Ideal road. 

''Almost everything," said he, "depends 
on depth. If you get a good solid foundation, 
the' ain't anything that can break up your 
road." 

"Exactly what I have discovered," I re- 
sponded. "Get down to bedrock and do an 
honest job of building." 

"And don't have too many sharp turns." 

"No," said I, "long, leisurely curves are^ 
best — all through life. You have observed 
that nearly all the accidents on the road are 
due to sharp turnings." 

"Right you are!" he exclaimed. 

"A man who tries to turn too sharply on 
his way nearly always skids." 

"Or else turns turtle in the ditch." 

But it was not until we reached the subject 
of oiling that we mounted to the real summit 
of enthusiastic agreement. Of all things 
on the road, or above the road, or in the 
waters under the road, there is nothing that 
the road-worker dislikes more than oil. 

"It's all right," said he, "to use oil for 



132 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

surfacin' and to keep down the dust. You 
don't need much and it ain't messy. But 
sometimes when you see oil pumped on a 
road, you know that either the contractor 
has been jobbin', or else the road's worn 
out and ought to be rebuilt." 

''That's exactly what I've found," said 
I. "Let a road become almost impassable 
with ruts and rocks and dust, and immedi- 
ately some man says, 'Oh, it's all right — 
put on a little oil ' " 

"That's what our supervisor is always 
sayin', " said the road-worker. 

"Yes," I responded, "it usually is the 
supervisor. He lives by it. He wants to 
smooth over the defects, he wants to lay 
the dust that every passerby kicks up, 
he tries to smear over the truth regarding 
conditions with messy and ill-smelling oil. 
Above everything, he doesn't want the 
road dug up and rebuilt — says it will 
interfere with traffic, injure business, and 
even set people to talking about changing 
the route entirely! Oh, haven't I seen it in 
religion, where they are doing their best 
to oil up roads that are entirely worn out 
— and as for politics, is not the cry of the 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 133 

party-roadster and the harmony-oilers abroad 
in the land?" 

In the excited interest with which this 
idea now bore me along I had entirely for- 
gotten the existence of my companion, and 
as I now glanced at him I saw him standing 
with a curious look of astonishment and 
suspicion on his face. I saw that I had 
unintentionally gone a little too far. So I 
said abruptly: 

"Partner, let's get a drink. I'm thirsty." 

He followed me, I thought a bit reluctantly, 
to a little brook not far up the road where 
we had been once before. As we were 
drinking, silently, I looked at the stout 
young fellow standing there, and I thought 
to myself: 

What a good, straightforward young fel- 
low he is anyway, and how thoroughly 
he knows his job. I thought how well 
he was equipped with unilluminated knowl- 
edge, and it came to me whimsically, 
that here was a fine bit of road-mending 
for me to do. 

Most people have sight, but few have 
insight; and as I looked into the clear blue 
eyes of my friend I had a sudden swift 



134 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

inspiration, and before I could repent of it 
I had said to him in the most serious voice 
that I could command: 

"Friend, I am in reality a spectacle- 
peddler " 

His glance shifted uncomfortably to my 
gray bag. 

"And I want to sell you a pair of spec- 
tacles," I said. "I see that you are nearly 
blind." 

"Me blind!" 

It would be utterly impossible to describe 
the expression on his face. His hand went 
involuntarily to his eyes, and he glanced 
quickly, somewhat fearfully, about. 

"Yes, nearly blind," said I. "I saw it 
when I first met you. You don't know it 
yourself yet, but I can assure you it is a bad 
case." 

I paused, and shook my head slowly. 
If I had not been so much in earnest, I 
think I should have been tempted to laugh 
outright. I had begun my talk with him 
half jestingly, with the amusing idea of 
breaking through his shell, but I now found 
myself tremendously engrossed, and desiring 
nothing in the world (at that moment) 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 135 

so much as to make him see what I saw. 
I felt as though I held a live human soul in 
my hand. 

''Say, partner," said the road-worker, "are 

you sure you aren't " He tapped his 

forehead and began to edge away. 

I did not answer his question at all, but 
continued, with my eyes fixed on him: 

"It is a peculiar sort of blindness. Ap- 
parently, as you look about, you see every- 
thing there is to see, but as a matter of fact 
you see nothing in the world but this road " 

"It's time that I was seein' it again then," 
said he, making as if to turn back to work, 
but remaining with a disturbed expression 
on his countenance. 

"The spectacles I have to sell," said I^ 
"are powerful magnifiers" — he glanced again 
at the gray bag. "When you put them on 
you will see a thousand wonderful things 
besides the road " 

"Then you ain't a road-worker after all!" 
he said, evidently trying to be bluft^ and 
outright with me. 

Now your substantial, sober, practical 
American will stand only about so much 



136 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the 
world that makes him more uncomfortable 
— yes, downright mad! — than to feel that 
he is being played with. I could see that 
I had nearly reached the limit with him, 
and that if I held him now it must be by 
driving the truth straight home. So I stepped 
over toward him and said very earnestly: 

"My friend, don't think I am merely 
joking you. I was never more in earnest 
in all my life. When I told you I was a 
road-worker I meant it, but I had in mind 
the mending of other kinds of roads than 
this." 

I laid my hand on his arm, and explained 
to him as directly and simply as English 
words could do it, how, when he had spoken 
of oil for his roads, I thought of another 
sort of oil for another sort of roads, and when 
he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking 
of curves in the roads I dealt with, and 
I explained to him what my roads were. 
I have never seen a man more intensely 
interested: he neither moved nor took his 
eyes from my face. 

"And when I spoke of selHng you a pair 
of spectacles," said I, "it was only a way of 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 137 

telling you how much I wanted to make you 
see my kinds of roads as well as your own." 

I paused, wondering if, after all, he 
could be made to see. I know now how 
the surgeon must feel at the crucial mo- 
ment of his accomplished operation. Will 
the patient live or die.^" 

The road-worker drew a long breath as 
he came out from under the anesthetic. 

"I guess, partner," said he, ''yo^'^e try- 
ing to put a stone or two in my ruts!" 

I had him! 

"Exactly," I exclaimed eagerly. 

We both paused. He was the first to 
speak — with some embarrassment: 

"Say, you're just like a preacher I used 
to know when I was a kid. He was always 
sayin' things that meant something else, 
and when you found out what he was drivin' 
at you always felt kind of queer in your 
insides." 

I laughed. 

"It's a mighty good sign," I said, "when 
a man begins to feel queer in the insides. 
It shows that something is happening to 
him." 

With that we walked back to the road, 



138 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

feeling very close and friendly — and began 
shovelling again, not saying much. After 
quite a time, when we had nearly cleaned 
up the landslide, I heard the husky road- 
worker chuckling to himself; finally, straight- 
ening up, he said: 

"Say, there's more things in a road than 
ever I dreamt of." 

*'I see," said I, "that the new spectacles 
are a good fit." 

The road-worker laughed long and loud. 

"You're a good one, all right," he said. 
"I see what you mean. I catch your point." 

"And now that you've got them on," 
said I, "and they are serving you so well, 
I'm not going to sell them to you at all. 
I'm going to present them to you — for 
I haven't seen anybody in a long time that 
I've enjoyed meeting more than I have you." 

We nurse a fiction that people love to 
cover up their feelings; but I have learned 
that if the feeling is real and deep they love 
far better to find a way to uncover it. 

"Same here," said the road-worker simply, 
but with a world of genuine feeling in his 
voice. 

Well, when it came time to stop work 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 139 

the road-worker insisted that I get in and 
go home with him. 

"I want you to see my wife and kids," 
said he. 

The upshot of it was that I not only 
remained for supper — and a good supper 
it was — but I spent the night in his little 
home, close at the side of the road near 
the foot of a fine hill. And from time to 
time all night long, it seemed to me, I could 
hear the rush of cars going by in the smooth 
road outside, and sometimes their lights 
flashed in at my window, and sometimes 
I heard them sound their brassy horns. 

I wish I could tell more of what I saw 
there, of the garden back of the house, and 
of all the road-worker and his wife told me 
of their simple history — but the road calls ! 

When I set forth early this morning the 
road-worker followed me out to the smooth 
macadam (his wife standing in the doorway 
with her hands rolled in her apron) and said 
to me, a bit shyly: 

" I'll be more sort o' — sort o' interested 
in roads since IVe seen you." 

"I'll be along again some of these days," 
said I, laughing, ''and I'll stop in and show 



I40 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

you my new stock of spectacles. Maybe I 
can sell you another pair!" 

*' Maybe you kin," and he smiled a broad, 
understanding smile. 

Nothing brings men together like having 
a joke in common. 

So I walked off down the road — in the 
best of spirits — ready for the events of an- 
other day. 

It will surely be a great adventure, one 
of these days, to come this way again — 
and to visit the Stanleys, and the Vedders, 
and the Minister, and drop in and sell another 
pair of specs to the Road-worker. It seems 
to me I have a wonderfully rosy future 
ahead of me! 

P. S. — I have not yet found out who painted 
the curious signs; but I am not as uneasy 
about it as I was. I have seen two more of 
them already this morning — and find they 
exert quite a psychological influence. 



AN EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN 
NATURE 





CHAPTER VI 



AN EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN NATURE 



IN THE early morning after I left the husky 
road-mender (wearing his new spectacles), 
I remained steadfastly on the Great Road or 
near it. It was a prime spring day, just a 
little hazy, as though promising rain, but soft 
and warm. 

"They will be working in the garden at 
home," I thought, "and there will be worlds 
of rhubarb and asparagus." Then I remem- 
bered how the morning sunshine would look 
on the little vine-clad back porch (reaching 

^43 



144 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

halfway up the weathered door) of my own 
house among the hills. 

It was the first time since my pilgrimage 
began that I had thought with any emotion 
of my farm — or of Harriet. 

And then the road claimed me again, 
and I began to look out for some further 
explanation of the curious sign, the single 
word "Rest," which had interested me so 
keenly on the preceding day. It may seem 
absurd to some who read these lines — 
some practical people ! — but I cannot convey 
the pleasure I had in the very elusiveness 
and mystery of the sign, nor how I wished 
I might at the next turn come upon the poet 
himself. I decided that no one but a poet 
could have contented himself with a lyric 
in one word, unless it might have been a 
humourist, to whom sometimes a single 
small word is more blessed than all the 
verbal riches of Webster himself. For it 
is nothing short of genius that uses one 
word when twenty will say the same 
thing! 

Or, would he, after all, turn out to be 
only a more than ordinarily alluring ad- 
vertiser.'* I confess my heart went into 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 145 

my throat that morning, when I first saw 
the sign, lest it read: 



JxllioX aurant 2 miles east 



nor should I have been surprised if it had. 

I caught a vicarious glimpse of the sign- 
man to-day, through the eyes of a young 
farmer. Yes, he s'posed he'd seen him, 
he said; wore a slouch hat, couldn't tell 
whether he was young or old. Drove into 
the bushes (just daown there beyond 
the brook) and, standin' on the seat of 
his buggy, nailed something to a tree. A 
day or two later — the dull wonder of man- 
kind! — the young farmer, passing that way 
to town, had seen the odd sign "Rest" on the 
tree: he s'posed the fellow put it there. 

"What does it mean?" 

"Well, naow, I hadn't thought," said the 
young farmer. 

"Did the fellow by any chance have long 
hair?" 

"Well, naow, I didn't notice," said he. 

"Are you sure he wore a slouch hat?" 



146 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Ye-es — or it may a-been straw," re- 
plied the observant young farmer. 

So I tramped that morning; and as I 
tramped I let my mind go out warmly 
to the people living all about on the farms 
or in the hills. It is pleasant at times to 
feel life, as it were, in general terms; no 
specific Mr. Smith or concrete Mr. Jones, 
but just human life. I love to think of 
people all around going out busily in the 
morning to their work and returning at 
night, weary, to rest. I like to think of 
them growing up, growing old, loving, achiev- 
ing, sinning, failing — in short, living. 

In such a live-minded mood as this it 
often happens that the most ordinary things 
appear charged with new significance. I 
suppose I had seen a thousand rural-mail 
boxes along country roads before that day, 
but I had seen them as the young farmer saw 
the sign-man. They were mere inert objects 
of iron and wood. 

But as I tramped, thinking of the people 
in the hills, I came quite unexpectedly 
upon a sandy by-road that came out through 
a thicket of scrub oaks and hazel-brush, 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 147 

like some shy countryman, to join the turn- 
pike. As I stood looking into it — for 
it seemed peculiarly inviting — I saw at 
the entrance a familiar group of rural-mail 
boxes. And I saw them not as dead things, 
but for the moment — the illusion was over- 
powering — they were living, eager hands 
outstretched to the passing throng. I could 
feel, hear, see the farmers up there in the 
hills reaching out to me, to all the world, 
for a thousand inexpressible things, for more 
life, more companionship, more comforts, 
more money. 

It occurred to me at that moment, whim- 
sically and yet somehow seriously, that I 
might respond to the appeal of the shy coun- 
try road and the outstretched hands. At 
first I did not think of anything I could do 
— save to go up and eat dinner with one 
of the hill farmers, which might not be an 
unmixed blessing! — and then it came to me. 

"I will write a letter!" 

Straightway and with the liveliest amuse- 
ment I began to formulate in my mind what 
I should say: 

Dear Friend : You do not know me. I am a passerby in 
the road. My name is David Grayson. You do not know 



148 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

me, and it may seem odd to you to receive a letter from an 
entire stranger. But I am soiliething of a farmer myself, and 
as I went by I could not help thinking of you and of your 
family and your farm. The fact is, I should like to look 
you up, and talk with you about many things. I myself 
cultivate a number of curious fields, and raise many kinds of 
crops 

At this interesting point my inspiration 
suddenly collapsed, for I had a vision, at 
once amusing and disconcerting, of my hill 
farmer (and his practical wife!) receiving 
such a letter (along with the country paper, 
a circular advertising a cure for catarrh,- 
and the most recent catalogue of the largest 
mail-order house in creation). I could see 
them standing there in their doorway, the 
man with his coat off, doubtfully scratching 
his head as he read my letter, the woman 
wiping her hands on her apron and looking 
over his shoulder, and a youngster squeezing 
between the two and demanding, ''What 
is it. Paw?" 

I found myself wondering how they would 
receive such an unusual letter, what they 
would take it to mean. And in spite of 
all I could do, I could imagine no expression 
on their faces save one of incredulity and 
suspicion. I could fairly see the shrewd, 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 149 

worldly wise look come into the farmer's face; 
I could hear him say: 

"Ha, guess he thinks we ain't cut our 
eye-teeth!" And he would instantly begin 
speculating as to whether this was a new 
scheme for selling him second-rate nursery 
stock, or the smooth introduction of another 
sewing-machine agent. 

Strange world, strange world! Sometimes 
it seems to me that the hardest thing of all 
to believe in is simple friendship. Is it not 
a comment upon our civilization that it 
is so often easier to believe that a man is a 
friend-for-profit, or even a cheat, than that 
he is frankly a well-wisher of his neighbours ? 

These reflections put such a damper upon 
my enthusiasm that I was on the point of 
taking again to the road, when it came to me 
powerfully: Why not try the experiment? 
Why not.? 

"Friendship," I said aloud, "is the greatest 
thing in the world. There is no door it will 
not unlock, no problem it will not solve. It 
is, after all, the only real thing in this world." 

The sound of my own voice brought me 
suddenly to myself, and I found that I 



ISO THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

was standing there in the middle of the 
public road, one clenched fist absurdly raised 
in air, delivering an oration to a congregation 
of rural-mail boxes! 

And yet, in spite of the humorous aspects 
of the idea, it still appeared to me that such 
an experiment would not only fit in with the 
true object of my journeying, but that it 
might be full of amusing and interesting 
adventures. Straightway I got my note- 
book out of my bag and, sitting down near 
the roadside, wrote my letter. I wrote it as 
though my life depended upon it, with the 
intent of making some one household there 
in the hills feel at least a little wave of warmth 
and sympathy from the great world that 
was passing in the road below. I tried to 
prove the validity of a kindly thought with 
no selling device attached to it; I tried to 
make it such a word of frank companionship 
as I myself, working in my own fields, would 
like to receive. 

Among the letter-boxes in the group was 
one that stood a little detached and behind 
the others, as though shrinking from such 
prosperous company. It was made of un- 
painted wood, with leather hinges, and looked 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 151 

shabby in comparison with the jaunty red, 
green, and gray paint of some of the other 
boxes (with their cocky little metallic flags 
upraised). It bore the good American name 
of Clark — T. N. Clark — and it seemed to 
me that I could tell something of the Clarks 
by the box at the crossing. 

"I think they need a friendly word," I said 
to myself. 

So I wrote the name T. N. Clark on my 
envelope and put the letter in his box. 

It was with a sense of joyous adventure 
that I now turned aside into the sandy road 
and climbed the hill. My mind busied 
itself with thinking how I should carry out 
my experiment, how I should approach these 
Clarks, and how and what they were. A 
thousand ways I pictured to myself the 
receipt of the letter: it would at least be 
something new for them, something just a 
little disturbing, and I was curious to see 
whether it might open the rift of wonder wide 
enough to let me slip into their lives. 

I have often wondered why it is that 
men should be so. fearful of new ventures 
in social relationships, when I have found 
them so fertile, so enjoyable. Most of us 



152 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

fear (actually fear) people who differ from 
ourselves, either up or down the scale. 
Your Edison pries fearlessly into the most 
intimate secrets of matter; your Marconi 
employs the mysterious properties of the 
'^jellied ether," but let a man seek to experi- 
ment with the laws of that singular electricity 
which connects you and me (though you be 
a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we 
think him a wild visionary, an academic 
person. I think sometimes that the science 
of humanity to-day is in about the state of 
darkness that the natural sciences were 
when Linnaeus and Cuvier and Lamarck 
began groping for the great laws of natural 
unity. Most of the human race is still 
groaning under the belief that each of us is 
a special and unrelated creation, just as 
men for ages saw no relationships between 
the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, 
and the fish of the sea. But, thank God, 
we are beginning to" learn that unity is as 
much a law of life as selfish struggle, and love 
a more vital force than avarice or lust of 
power or place. A Wandering Carpenter 
knew it, and taught it, twenty centuries 
ago. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 153 

"The next house beyond the ridge," said 
the toothless old woman, pointing with 
a long finger, "is the Clarks'. You can't 
miss it," and I thought she looked at mc 
oddly. 

I had been walking briskly for some 
three miles, and it was with keen expecta- 
tion that I now mounted the ridge and 
saw the farm for which I was looking, lying 
there in the valley before me. It was al- 
together a wild and beautiful bit of country — 
stunted cedars on the knolls of the rolling 
hills, a brook trailing its way among alders 
and wallows down a long valley, and shaggy 
old fields smiling in the sun. As I came nearer 
I could see that the only disharmony in the 
valley was the work (or idleness) of men. A 
broken mowing-machine stood in the field 
where it had been left the summer before, rusty 
and forlorn, and dead weeds marked the 
edges of a field wherein the spring plough- 
ing was now only halff done. The whole 
V farmstead, indeed, looked tired. As for the 
house and barn, they had reached that final 
stage of decay in which the best thing that 
could be said of them was that they were 
picturesque. Everything was as difi'erent 



154 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

from the farm of the energetic and joyous 
Stanleys, whose work I had shared only a 
few days before, as anything that could be 
imagined. 

Now, my usual way of getting into step 
with people is simplicity itself. I take off 
my coat and go to work with them and the 
first thing I know we have become first-rate 
friends. One doesn't dream of the possi- 
bilities of companionship in labour until he 
has tried it. 

But how shall one get into step with a man 
who is not stepping ? 

On the porch of the farmhouse, there 
in the mid-afternoon, a man sat idly; and 
children were at play in the yard. I went 
in at the gate, not knowing in the least 
what I should say or do, but determined to 
get hold of the problem somewhere. As I 
approached the step, I swung my bag from 
my shoulder. 

"Don't want to buy nothin', " said the man. 

"Well," said I, "that is fortunate, for I 
have nothing to sell. But you've got some- 
thing I want." 

He looked at me dully. 

"What's that?" 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 155 

"A drink of water." 

Scarcely moving his head, he called to 




AS I STOOD THERE THE CHILDREN GATHERED CURIOUSLY 
AROUND ME " 

a shy older girl who had just appeared in 

the doorway. 

"Mandy, bring a dipper of water." 

As I stood there the children gathered 



iS6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

curiously around me, and the man con- 
tinued to sit in his chair, saying absolutely 
nothing, a picture of dull discouragement. 

"How they need something to stir them 
up," I thought. 

When I had emptied the dipper, I sat 
down on the top step of the porch, and, 
without saying a word to the man, placed 
my bag beside me and began to open it. 
The shy girl paused, dipper in hand, the 
children stood on tiptoe, and even the man 
showed signs of curiosity. With studied 
deliberation I took out two books I had 
with me and put them on the porch; then I 
proceeded to rummage for a long time in 
the bottom of the bag as though I could 
not find what I wanted. Every eye was 
glued upon me, and I even heard the step 
of Mrs. Clark as she came to the doorway, 
but I did not look up or speak. Finally 
I pulled out my tin whistle and, leaning 
back against the porch column, placed it to 
my lips, and began playing in Tom Madison's 
best style (eyes half closed, one toe tapping 
to the music, head nodding, fingers lifted 
high from the stops), I began playing 
"Money Musk,'' and "Old Dan Tucker." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 157 

Oh, I put vim into it, I can tell you ! And bad 
as my playing was, I had from the start 
an absorption of attention from my audi- 
ence that Paderewski himself might have 
envied. I wound up with a lively trill in 
the high notes and took my whistle from 
my lips with a hearty laugh, for the whole 
thing had been downright good fun, the 
playing itself, the make-believe which went 
with it, the surprise and interest in the 
children's faces, the slow-breaking smile of 
the little girl with the dipper. 

"I'll warrant you, madam," I said to the 
woman who now stood frankly in the door- 
way with her hands wrapped in her apron, 
"you haven't heard those tunes since you 
were a girl and danced to 'em." 

"You're right," she responded heartily. 

"I'll give you another jolly one," I said, 
and, replacing my whistle, I began with 
even greater zest to play "Yankee Doodle." 

When I had gone through it half a dozen 
times with such added variations and trills 
as I could command, and had two of the 
children hopping about in the yard, and the 
forlorn man tapping his toe to the tune, and 
a smile on the face of the forlorn woman, I 



iS8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

wound up with a rush, and then, as if I could 
hold myself in no longer (and I couldn't 
either!), I suddenly burst out: 

Yankee doodle dandy! 
Yankee doodle dandy! 
Mind the music and the step, 
And with the girls be handy. 

It may seem surprising, but I think I 
can understand why it was — when I looked 
up at the woman in the doorway there were 
tears in her eyes! 

"Do you know 'John Brown's Body'?" 
eagerly inquired the little girl with the 
dipper, and then, as if she had done some- 
thing quite bold and improper, she blushed 
and edged toward the doorway. 

"How does it go?" I asked, and one of 
the bold lads in the yard instantly puck- 
ered his lips to show me, and immediately 
they were all trying it. 

"Here goes," said I, and for the next few 
minutes, and in my very best style, I hung 
Jeff Davis on the sour apple-tree, and I sent 
the soul of John Brown marching onward 
with an altogether unnecessary number of 
hallelujahs. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 159 

I think sometimes that people — whole 
families of 'em — literally perish for want 
of a good, hearty, whole-souled, mouth- 
opening, throat-stretching, side-aching laugh. 
They begin to think themselves the abused 
of creation, they begin to advise with their 
livers and to hate their neighbours, and the 
whole world becomes a miserable dark blue 
place quite unfit for human habitation. Well, 
all this is often only the result of a neglect 
to exercise properly those muscles of the 
body (and of the soul) w^hich have to do with 
honest laughter. 

I've never supposed I was an especially 
amusing person, but before I got through 
with it I had the Clark family well loosened 
up with laughter, although I wasn't quite 
sure some of the time whether Mrs. Clark 
was laughing or crying. I had them all 
laughing and talking, asking questions and 
answering them as though I were an old and 
valued neighbour. 

Isn't it odd how unconvinced we often 
are by the crises in the lives of other people? 
They seem to us trivial or unimportant; 
but the fact is, the crises in the life of a boy, 
for example, or of a poor man, are as com- 



i6o THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

manding as the crises in the life of the greatest 
statesman or millionaire, for they involve 
equally the whole personality, the entire 
prospects. 

The Clark family, I soon learned, had 
lost its pig. A trivial matter, you say? I 
wonder if anything is ever trivial. A year 
of poor crops, sickness, low prices, discour- 
agement — and, at the end of it, on top of it 
all, the cherished pig had died! 

From all accounts (and the man on the 
porch quite lost his apathy in telling me 
about it) it must have been a pig of remarkable 
virtues and attainments, a paragon of pigs — 
in whom had been bound up the many pos- 
sibilities of new shoes for the children, a 
hat for the lad}^, a new pair of overalls for 
the gentleman, and I know not what other 
kindred luxuries. I do not think, indeed, 
I ever had the portrait of a pig drawn for 
me with quite such ardent enthusiasm of 
detail, and the more questions I asked 
the more eager the story, until finally it 
became necessary for me to go to the barn, 
the cattle-pen, the pig-pen and the chicken- 
house, that I might visualize more clearly 
the scene of the tragedy. The whole family 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD i6i 

trooped after us like a classic chorus, but Mr. 
Clark himself kept the centre of the stage. 

How plainly I could read upon the face 
of the land the story of this hill farmer 
and his meagre existence — his ill-directed 
effort to wring a poor living for his family 
from these upland fields, his poverty, and, 
above all, his evident lack of knowledge of 
his own calling. Added to these things, 
and perhaps the most depressing of all 
his difficulties, was the utter loneliness of 
the task, the feeling that it mattered little 
to any one whether the Clark family w^orked 
or not, or indeed whether they lived or died. 
A perfectly good American family was here 
being wasted, with the precious land they 
lived on, because no one had taken the trouble 
to make them feel that they were a part 
of this Great American Job. 

As we went back to the house, a freckled- 
nosed neighbour's boy came in at the gate. 

"A letter for you, Mr. Clark," said he. 
"I brought it up with our mail." 

*'A letter!" exclaimed Mrs. Clark. 

''A letter!" echoed at least three of the 
children in unison. 



1 62 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Probably a dun from Brewster," said 
Mr. Clark discouragingly. 

I felt a curious sensation about the heart, 
and an eagerness of interest I have rarely 
experienced. I had no idea what a mere 
letter — a mere unopened unread letter — 
w^ould mean to a family like this. 

"It has no stamp on it!" exclaimed the 
older girl. 

Mrs. Clark turned it over wonderingly 
in her hands. Mr. Clark hastily put on a 
pair of steel-bowed spectacles. 

"Let me see it," he said, and when he 
also had inspected it minutely he solemnly 
tore open the envelope and drew forth my 
letter. 

I assure you I never awaited the reading 
of any writing of mine with such breathless 
interest. How would they take it? Would 
they catch the meaning that I meant to con- 
vey? And would they suspect me of having 
written it? 

Mr. Clark sat on the porch and read the 
letter slowly through to the end, turned 
the sheet over and examined it carefully, 
and then began reading it again to himself^ 
Mrs. Clark leaning over his shoulder. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 163 

"What does it mean?" asked Mr. Clark. 

"It's too good to be true," said Mrs. 
Clark with a sigh. 

I don't know how long the discussion 
might have continued — probably for days 
or weeks — had not the older girl, now 
flushed of face and rather pretty, looked 
at me and said breathlessly (she was as 
sharp as a briar): 

"You wrote it." 

I stood the battery of all their eyes for 
a moment, smiling and rather excited. 

"Yes," I said earnestly, "I wrote it, and 
I mean every word of it." 

I had anticipated some shock of sus- 
picion and inquiry, but to my surprise it 
was accepted as simply as a neighbourly 
good morning. I suppose the mystery of 
it was eclipsed by my astonishing pres- 
ence there upon the scene with my tin 
whistle. 

At any rate, it was a changed, eager, 
interested family which now occupied the 
porch of that dilapidated farmhouse. And 
immediately we fell into a lively discussion 
of crops and farming, and indeed the whole 
farm question, in which I found both the 



i64 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

man and his wife singularly acute — sharp- 
ened upon the stone of hard experience. 

Indeed, I found right here, as I have 
many times found among our American 
farmers, an intelligence (a literacy grow- 
ing out of what I believe to be improper 
education) which was better able to dis- 
cuss the problems of rural life than to grapple 
wdth and solve them. A dull, illiterate 
Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes 
succeed much better at the job of life than 
his American neighbour. 

Talk with almost any man for half an 
hour, and you will find that his conversa- 
tion, like an old-fashioned song, has a reg- 
ularly recurrent chorus. I soon discovered 
Mr. Clark's chorus. 

"Now, if only I had a little cash," he 
sang, or, "If I had a few dollars, I could 
do so and so." 

Why, he was as helplessly dependent 
upon money as any soft-handed millionairess. 
He considered himself poor and helpless 
because he lacked dollars, whereas people 
are really poor and helpless only when they 
lack courage and faith. 

We were so much absorbed in our talk 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 165 

that I was greatly surprised to hear Mrs. 
Clark's voice at the doorway. 

"Won't you come in to supper?" 

After we had eaten, there was a great 
demand for more of my tin whistle (oh, 
I know how Caruso must feel!), and I played 
over every blessed tune I knew, and some 
I didn't, four or five times, and after that 
we told stories and cracked jokes in a way 
that must have been utterly astonishing in 
that household. After the children had been, 
yes, driven to bed, Mr. Clark seemed about 
to drop back into his lamentations over his 
condition (which I have no doubt had come 
to give him a sort of pleasure), but I turned 
to Mrs. Clark, whom I had come to respect 
very highly, and began to talk about the 
little garden she had started, which was 
about the most enterprising thing about the 
place. 

"Isn't it one of the finest things in this 
world," said I, "to go out into a good garden 
in the summer days and bring in loaded 
baskets filled with beets and cabbages and 
potatoes, just for the gathering?" 

I knew from the expression on Mrs. Clark's 
face that I had touched a sounding note. 



1 66 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Opening the green corn a little at the 
top to see if it is ready and then stripping 
it off and tearing away the moist white 
husks " 

"And picking tomatoes?" said Mrs. Clark. 

"And knuckling the watermelons to see 
if they are ripe? Oh, I tell you there are 
thousands of people in this country who'd 
like to be able to pick their dinner in the 
garden!" 

"It's fine!" said Mrs. Clark with amused 
enthusiasm, "but I like best to hear the 
hens cackling in the barnyard in the morning 
after they've laid, and to go and bring in 
the eggs." 

"Just like a daily present!" I said. 

"Ye-es," responded the soundly practi- 
cal Mrs. Clark, thinking, no doubt, that there 
were other aspects of the garden and chicken 
problem. 

"I'll tell you another thing I like about 
a farmer's life," said I, "that's the smell in 
the house in the summer when there are pre- 
serves, or sweet pickles, or jam, or whatever it 
is, simmering on the stove. No matter where 
you are, up in the garret or down cellar, it's 
cinnamon, and allspice, and cloves, and every 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 167 

sort of sugary odour. Now, that gets me 
where I live!" 

"It is good!" said Mrs. Clark with ^ 
laugh that could certainly be called nothing 
if not girlish. 

All this time I had been keeping one eye on 
Mr. Clark. It was amusing to see him strug- 
gling against a cheerful view of life. He now 
broke into the conversation. 

"Well, but " he began. 

Instantly I headed him off. 

"And think," said I, "of living a life in 
which you are beholden to no man. It's 
a free life, the farmer's life. No one can 
discharge you because you are sick, or tired, 
or old, or because you are a Democrat or 
a Baptist!" 

"Well, but " 

"And think of having to pay no rent, 
nor of having to live upstairs in a tene- 
ment!" 

"Well, but " 

"Or getting run over by a street-car, 
or having the children play in the gut- 
ters." 

"I never did like to think of what my 



i68 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

children would do if we went to town," said 
Mrs. Clark. 

"I guess not!" I exclaimed. 

The fact is, most people don't think half 
enough of themselves and of their jobs; 
but before we went to bed that night I 
had the forlorn T. N. Clark talking about 
the virtues of his farm in quite a surprising 
way. 

I even saw him eying me two or three 
times with a shrewd look in his eyes (your 
American is an irrepressible trader) as though 
I might possibly be some would-be pur- 
chaser in disguise. 

(I shall write some time a dissertation on 
the advantages of wearing shabby clothing.) 

The farm really had many good points. 
One of them was a shaggy old orchard 
of good and thriving but utterly neglected 
apple-trees. 

"Man alive," I said, when we went out 
to see it in the morning, "you've got a gold 
mine here!" And I told him how in our 
neighbourhood we were renovating the old 
orchards, pruning them back, spraying, and 
bringing them into bearing again. 

He had never, since he owned the place, 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 169 

had a salable crop of fruit. When we came 
in to breakfast I quite stirred the practical 
Mrs. Clark with my enthusiasm, and she 
promised at once to send for a bulletin on 
apple-tree renovation, published by the state 
experiment station. I am sure I was no 
more earnest in my advice than the conditions 
warranted. 

After breakfast we went into the field, 
and I suggested that instead of ploughing 
any more land — for the season was al- 
ready late — we get out all the accumula- 
tions of rotted manure from around the barn 
and strew it on the land already ploughed 
and harrow it in. 

"A good job on a little piece of land," 
I said, "is far more profitable than a poor 
job on a big piece of land." 

Without more ado we got his old team 
hitched up and began loading and haul- 
ing out the manure, and spent all day long 
at it. Indeed, such was the height of en- 
thusiasm which T. N. Clark now reached 
(for his was a temperament that must either 
soar in the clouds or grovel in the mire), 
that he did not wish to stop when A4rs. 
Clark called us in to supper. In that one 



I70 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

day his crop of corn, in perspective, over- 
flowed his crib, he could not find boxes and 
barrels for his apples, his shed would not 
hold all his tobacco, and his barn was already 
being enlarged to accommodate a couple more 
cows ! He was also keeping bees and growing 
ginseng. 

But it was fine, that evening, to see Mrs. 
Clark's face, the renewed hope and courage 
in it. I thought as I looked at her (for she 
was the strong and steady one in that 
house) : 

"If you can keep the enthusiasm up, 
if you can make that husband of yours 
grow corn, and cows, and apples as you 
raise chickens and make garden, there is 
victory yet in this valley." 

That night it rained, but in spite of the 
moist earth we spent almost all of the fol- 
lowing day hard at work in the field, and 
all the time talking over ways and means 
for the future, but the next morning, early, 
I swung my bag on my back and left 
them. 

I shall not attempt to describe the friend- 
liness of our parting. Mrs. Clark followed 
me wistfully to the gate. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



171 



I can't tell you 



she began, with 



the tears starting in her eyes. 

"Then don't try " said I, smiling. 

And so I swung off down the country 
road, without looking back. 




THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 








CHAPTER VII 



THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 

IN SOME strange deep way there is no 
experience of my whole pilgrimage that 
I look back upon with so much wistful 
affection as I do upon the events of the 
day — the day and the wonderful night — 
which followed my long visit with the for- 
lorn Clark family upon their hill farm. At 
first I hesitated about including an account 
of it here because it contains so little of 
what may be called thrilling or amusing in- 
cident. 

"They want only the lively stories of 
my adventures," I said to myself, and 
I was at the point of pushing my notes 
to the edge of the table where (had I let 
go) they would have fallen into the con- 

175 



176 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

venlent oblivion of the waste-basket. But 
something held me back. 

"No," said I, "I'll tell it; if it meant so 
much to me, it may mean something to 
the friends who are following these lines." 

For, after all, it is not what goes on outside 
of a man, the clash and clatter of super- 
ficial events, that arouses our deepest interest, 
but what goes on inside. Consider then 
that in this narrative I shall open a little 
door in my heart and let you look in, if 
you care to, upon the experiences of a day 
and a night in which I was supremely happy. 

If you had chanced to be passing, that 
crisp spring morning, you would have seen 
a traveller on foot with a gray bag on his 
shoulder, swinging along the country road; 
and you might have been astonished to see 
him lift his hat at you and wish you a good 
morning. You might have turned to look 
back at him, as you passed, and found him 
turning also to look back at you — and wish- 
ing he might know you. But you would not 
have known what he was chanting under 
his breath as he tramped (how little we 
know of a man by the shabby coat he wears), 
nor how keenly he was enjoying the light 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 177 

airs and the warm sunshine of that fine 
spring morning. 

After leaving the hill farm he had walked 
five miles up the valley, had crossed the 
ridge at a place called the Little Notch, 
where all the world lay stretched before 
him like the open palm of his hand, and had 
come thus to the boundaries of the Undis- 
covered Country. He had been for days 
troubled with the deep problems of other 
people, and it seemed to him this morning 
as though a great stone had been rolled from 
the door of his heart, and that he was enter- 
ing upon a new world — a wonderful, high, 
free world. And, as he tramped, certain 
lines of a stanza long ago caught up in his 
memory from some forgotten page came 
up to his lips, and these were the words (you 
did not know as you passed) that he was 
chanting under his breath as he tramped, for 
they seem charged with the spirit of the hour: 

I've bartered my sheets for a starlit bed; 
I've traded my meat for a crust of bread; 
I've changed my book for a sapling cane, 
And I'm off to the end of the world again. 

In the Undiscovered Country that morning 
it was wonderful how fresh the spring woods 



178 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

were, and how the birds sang in the trees, 
and how the brook sparkled and murmured 
at the roadside. The recent rain had washed 
the atmosphere until it was as clear and spark- 
ling and heady as new wine, and the footing 
was firm and hard. As one tramped he 
could scarcely keep from singing or shouting 
aloud for the very joy of the day. 

"I think," I said to myself, "I've never 
been in a better country," and it did not 
seem to me I cared to know where the gray 
road ran, nor how far away the blue hills were. 

"It is wonderful enough anywhere here," 
I said. 

And presently I turned from the road 
and climbed a gently sloping hillside among 
oak and chestnut trees. The earth was well 
carpeted for my feet, and here and there 
upon the hillside, where the sun came through 
the green roof of foliage, were warm splashes 
of yellow light, and here and there, on shadier 
slopes, the new ferns were spread upon the 
earth like some lacy coverlet. I finally 
sat down at the foot of a tree where through 
a rift in the foliage in the valley below I 
could catch a glimpse in the distance of the 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 179 

meadows and the misty blue hills. I was 
glad to rest, just rest, for the two previous 
days of hard labour, the labour and the 
tramping, had wearied me, and I sat for a 
long time quietly looking about me, scarcely 
thinking at all, but seeing, hearing, smelling 
— feeling the spring morning, and the woods^ 
and the hills, and the patch of sky I could 
see. 

For a long, long time I sat thus, but 
finally my mind began to flow again, and 
I thought how fine it would be if I had 
some good friend there with me to enjoy 
the perfect surroundings — some friend who 
would understand. And I thought of the 
Vedders with whom I had so recently spent 
a wonderful day; and I wished that they 
might be with me; there were so many things 
to be said — to be left unsaid. Upon this 
it occurred to me, suddenly, whimsically, 
and I exclaimed aloud: 

"Why, I'll just call them up." 

Half turning to the trunk of the tree 
where I sat, I placed one hand to my ear 
and the other to my lips and said: 

"Hello, Central, give me Mr. Vedder." 

I waited a moment, smiling a little at 



i8o THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

my own absurdity and yet quite captivated 
by the enterprise. 

"Is this Mr. Vedder? Oh, Mrs. Vedder! 
Well, this is David Grayson." . . . 

''Yes, the very same. A bad penny, a 
rolling stone." . . . 

"Yes. I want you both to come here 
as quickly as you can. I have the most 
important news for you. The mountain 
laurels are blooming, and the wild straw- 
berries are setting their fruit. Yes, yes, 
and in the fields — all around here, to-day — 
there are wonderful white patches of daisies, 
and from where I sit I can see an old meadow 
as yellow as gold with buttercups. And 
the bobolinks are hovering over the low spots. 
Oh, but it is fine here — and we are not to- 
gether!" . . , 

"No; I cannot give exact directions. But 
take the Long Road and turn at the turning 
by the tulip-tree, and you will find me at 
home. Come right in without knocking." 

I hung up the receiver. For a single 
instant it had seemed almost true, and 
indeed I believe — I wonder 

Some day, I thought, just a bit sadly. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD i8i 

for I shall probably not be here then — ' 
some day, we shall be able to call our friends 
through space and time. Some day we 
shall discover that marvellously simple coherer 
by which we may better utilize the myste- 
rious ether of love. 

For a time I was sad with thoughts of 
the unaccomplished future, and then I re- 
flected that if I could not call up the Vedders 
so informally I could at least write down a 
few paragraphs which would give them some 
faint impression of that time and place. 
But I had no sooner taken out my note-book 
and put down a sentence or two than I stuck 
fast. How foolish and feeble written words 
are anyway! With what glib facility they 
describe, but how inadequately they convey. 
A thousand times I have thought to myself, 
"If only I could write! ^^ 

Not being able to write I turned, as I 
have so often turned before, to some good 
old book, trusting that I might find in the 
writing of another man what I lacked in 
my own. I took out my battered copy 
of Montaigne and, opening it at random, as 
I love to do, came, as luck would have it, 
upon a chapter devoted to coaches, in which 



1 82 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

there is much curious (and worthless) in- 
formation, darkened with Latin quotations. 
This reading had an unexpected effect upon 
me. 

I could not seem to keep my mind down 
upon the printed page; it kept bounding 
away at the sight of the distant hills, at 
the sound of a woodpecker on a dead stub 
which stood near me, and at the thousand and 
one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, 
tappings, which animate the mystery of the 
forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed 
page in comparison with the book of lif&, how 
shut-in its atmosphere, how tinkling and dis- 
tant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut 
my book with a snap. 

"Musty coaches and Latin quotations!" 
I exclaimed. "Montaigne's no writer for 
the open air. He belongs at a study fire on 
a quiet evening!" 

I had anticipated, when I started out, 
many a pleasant hour by the roadside or 
in the woods with my books, but this was 
almost the first opportunity I had found for 
reading (as it was almost the last), so full 
was the present world of stirring events. 
As for poor old Montaigne, I have been out 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 183 

of harmony with him ever since, nor have 
I wanted him in the intimate case at my 
elbow. 

After a long time in the forest, and the 
sun having reached the high heavens, I 
gathered up my pack and set forth again 
along the slope of the hills — not hurrying, 
just drifting and enjoying every sight and 
sound. And thus walking I came in sight, 
through the trees, of a glistening pool of 
water and made my way straight toward it. 

A more charming spot I have rarely seen. 
In some former time an old mill had stood 
at the foot of the little valley, and a ruinous 
stone dam still held the water in a deep, 
quiet pond between two round hills. Above 
it a brook ran down through the woods, and 
below, with a pleasant musical sound, the 
water dripped over the mossy stone lips of 
the dam and fell into the rocky pool below. 
Nature had long ago healed the wounds of 
men; she had half covered the ruined mill 
with verdure, had softened the stone walls 
of the dam with mosses and lichens, and 
had crept down the steep hillside and was 
now leaning so far out over the pool that 



1 84 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

she could see her reflection In the quiet 
water. 

Near the upper end of the pond I found 
a clear white sand-bank, where no doubt 
a thousand fishermen had stood, half hidden 
by the willows, to cast for trout in the pool 
below. I intended merely to drink and 
moisten my face, but as I knelt by the pool 
and saw my reflection in the clear water I 
wanted something more than that! In a 
moment I had thrown aside my bag and 
clothes and found myself wading naked into 
the water. 

It was cold! I stood a moment there in 
the sunny air, the great world open around me, 
shuddering, for I dreaded the plunge — and 
then with a run, a shout and a splash I took 
the deep water. Oh, but it was fine! With 
long, deep strokes I carried myself fairly 
to the middle of the pond. The first chill 
was succeeded by a tingling glow, and I can 
convey no idea whatever of the glorious 
sense of exhilaration I had. I swam with 
the broad front stroke, I swam on my side, 
head half submerged, with a deep under 
stroke, and I rolled over on my back and 
swam with the water lapping my chin. Thus 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 185 

I came to the end of the pool near the old 
dam, touched my feet on the bottom, gave a 
primeval whoop, and dove back into the 
water again. I have rarely experienced keener 
physical joy. After swimming thus bois- 
terously for a time, I quieted down to long, 
leisurely strokes, conscious of the water play- 
ing across my shoulders and singing at my 
ears, and finally, reaching the centre of the 
pond, I turned over on my back and, paddling 
lazily, watched the slow procession of light 
clouds across the sunlit openings of the 
trees above me. Away up in the sky I 
could see a hawk slowly swimming about 
(in his element as I was in mine), and nearer 
at hand, indeed fairly in the thicket about 
the pond, I could hear a wood-thrush singing. 

And so, shaking the water out of my hair 
and swimming with long and leisurely strokes, 
I returned to the sand-bank, and there, 
standing in a spot of warm sunshine, I dried 
myself with the towel from my bag. And 
I said to myself: 

"Surely it is good to be alive at a time 
like this!" 

Slowly I drew on my clothes, idling there 
in the sand, and afterward I found an in- 



1 86 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

viting spot in an old meadow where I threw 
myself down on the grass under an apple- 
tree and looked up into the shadowy places 
in the foliage above me. I felt a delicious 
sense of physical well-being, and I was pleas- 
antly tired. 

So I lay there — and the next thing I 
knew, I turned over, feeling cold and stiff, 
and opened my eyes upon the dusky shadows 
of late evening. I had been sleeping for 
hours ! 

The next few minutes (or was it an hour, 
or eternity?), I recall as containing some 
of the most exciting and, when all is said, 
amusing incidents in my whole life. And 
I got quite a new glimpse of that sometimes 
bumptious person known as David Grayson. 

The first sensation I had was one of com- 
plete panic. What was I to do? Where 
was I to go ? 

Hastily seizing my bag — and before I 
was half awake — I started rapidly across 
the meadow, in my excitement tripping and 
falling several times in the first hundred 
yards. In daylight I have no doubt that 
I should easily have seen a gateway or at 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 187 

least an opening from the old meadow, but 
in the fast-gathering darkness it seemed to 
me that the open field was surrounded on 
every side by impenetrable forests. Absurd 
as it may seem, for no one knows what his 
mind will do at such a moment, I recalled 
vividly a passage from Stanley's story pf his 
search for Livingstone, in which he relates 
how he escaped from a difficult place in the 
jungle by KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD. 

I print these words in capitals because 
they seemed written that night upon the 
sky. Keeping straight ahead^ I entered the 
forest on one side of the meadow (with 
quite a heroic sense of adventure), but 
scraped my shin on a fallen log and ran 
into a tree with bark on it that felt like 
a gigantic currycomb — and stopped! 

Up to this point I think I was still partly 
asleep. Now, however, I waked up. 

''All you need," said I to myself in my 
most matter-of-fact tone, "is a little cool 
sense. Be quiet now and reason it out." 

So I stood there for some moments reason- 
ing it out, with the result that I turned back 
and found the meadow again. 

"What a fool IVe been!" I said. "Isn't 



i88 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

it perfectly plain that I should have gone 
down to the pond, crossed over the inlet, 
and reached the road by the way I came?" 
, Having thus settled my problem, and 
congratulating myself on my perspicacity, 
I started straight for the mill-pond, but 
to my utter amazement, in the few short 
hours while I had been asleep, that entire 
body of water had evaporated, the dam had 
disappeared, and the stream had dried up. 
I must certainly present the facts in this 
remarkable case to some learned society. 

I then decided to return to the old apple- 
tree where I had slept, which now seemed 
quite like home, but, strange to relate, the 
apple-tree had also completely vanished from 
the enchanted meadow. At that I began 
to suspect that in coming out of the forest I 
had somehow got into another and somewhat 
similar old field. I have never had a more con- 
fused or eerie sensation; not fear, but a sort 
of helplessness in which for an instant I actu- 
ally began to doubt whether it was really I 
myself, David Grayson, who stood there in 
the dark meadow, or whether I was the 
victim of a peculiarly bad dream. I suppose 
many other people have had these sensations 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 189 

under similar conditions, but they were new 
to me. 

I turned slowly around and looked for 
a light; I think I never wanted so much 
to see some sign of human habitation as I 
did at that moment. 

What a coddled world we live in, truly. 
That being out after dark in a meadow should 
so disturb the very centre of our being! 
In all my life, indeed, and I suppose the 
same is true of ninty-nine out of a hundred 
of the people in America to-day, I had never 
before found myself where nothing stood 
between nature and me, where I had no 
place to sleep, no shelter for the night — 
nor any prospect of finding one. I w^as 
infinitely less resourceful at that moment than 
a rabbit, or a partridge, or a gray squirrel. 

Presently I sat down on the ground where 
I had been standing, with a vague fear (absurd 
to look back upon!) that it, too, in some man- 
ner might slip away from under me. And as 
I sat there I began to have familiar gnawings 
at the pit of my stomach, and I remembered 
that, save for a couple of Mrs. Clark's dough- 
nuts eaten while I was sitting on the hillside, 



I90 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

ages ago, I had had nothing since my early 
breakfast. 

With this thought of my predicament — 
and the gHmpse I had of myself "hungry 
and homeless" — the humour of the whole 
situation suddenly came over me, and, be- 
ginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my 
mind dwelt upon my recent adventures, with 
a long, loud, hearty laugh. 

As I laughed — and what a roar it made 
in that darkness ! — I got up on my feet 
and looked up at. the sky. One bright 
star shone out over the woods, and in the 
high heavens I could see dimly the white 
path of the Milky Way. And all at once I 
seemed again to be in command of myself 
and of the world. I felt a sudden lift and 
thrill of the spirits, a warm sense that this 
too was part of the great adventure — the 
Thing Itself. 

"This is the light," I said looking up 
again at the sky and the single bright star, 
"which is set for me to-night. I will make 
my bed by it." 

I can hope to make no one understand 
(unless he understands already) with what 
joy of adventure I now crept through the 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 191 

meadow toward the wood. It was an un- 
known, unexplored world I was in, and I, 
the fortunate discoverer, had here to shift 
for himself, make his home under the stars! 
Marquette on the wild shores of the Mis- 
sissippi, or Stanley in Africa, had no joy that 
I did not know at that moment. 

I crept along the meadow and came at 
last to the wood. Here I chose a somewhat 
sheltered spot at the foot of a large tree — 
and yet a spot not so obscured that I could 
not look out over the open spaces of the 
meadow and see the sky. Here, groping in the 
darkness, like some primitive creature, I raked 
together a pile of leaves with my fingers, 
and found dead twigs and branches of trees; 
but in that moist forest (where the rain had 
fallen only the day before) my efforts to 
kindle a fire were unavailing. Upon this, I 
considered using some pages from my note- 
book, but another alternative suggested itself: 

''Why not Montaigne?" 

With that I groped for the familiar volume, 
and with a curious sensation of satisfaction 
I tore out a handful of pages from the back. 

''Better Montaigne than Grayson," I said, 
with a chuckle. It was amazing how Mon- 



192 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

taigne sparkled and crackled when he was 
well lighted. 

"There goes a bundle of quotations from 
Vergil," I said, "and there's his observations 
on the eating of fish. There are more uses 
than one for the classics." 

So I ripped out a good part of another 
chapter, and thus, by coaxing, got my fire to 
going. It was not difficult after that to find 
enough fuel to make it blaze up warmly. 

I opened my bag and took out the remnants 
of the luncheon which Mrs. Clark had given 
me that morning; and I was surprised and 
delighted to find, among the other things, a 
small bottle of coffee. This suggested all 
sorts of pleasing possibilities and, the spirit 
of invention being now awakened, I got out 
my tin cup, split a sapling stick so that I 
could fit it into the handle, and set the cup, 
full of coffee, on the coals at the edge of the 
fire. It was soon heated, and although I 
spilled some of it in getting it off, and 
although it was well spiced with ashes, I 
enjoyed it, with Mrs. Clark's doughnuts 
and sandwiches (some of which I toasted 
with a sapling fork) as thoroughly, I think, 
as ever I enjoyed any meal. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 193 

How little we know — we who dread life 
— how much there is in life I 

My activities around the fire had warmed 
me to the bone, and after I was well through 
with my meal I gathered a plentiful supply 
of wood and placed it near at hand, I got 
out my waterproof cape and put it on, and, 
finally piling more sticks on the fire, I sat 
down comfortably at the foot of the tree. 

I wish I could convey the mystery and 
the beauty of that night. Did you ever sit 
by a campfire and watch the flames dance, 
and the sparks fly upward into the cool dark 
air? Did you ever see the fitful light among 
the tree-depths, at one moment opening 
vast shadowy vistas into the forest, at the 
next dying downward and leaving it all in 
sombre mystery? It came to me that night 
with the wonderful vividness of a fresh ex- 
perience. 

And what a friendly and companionable 
thing a campfire is! How generous and 
outright it is! It plays for you when you 
wish to be lively, and it glows for you when 
you wish to be reflective. 

After a while, for I did not feel in the 



194 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

least sleepy, I stepped out of the woods to 
the edge of the pasture. All around me lay 
the dark and silent earth, and above the 
blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with the 
blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I 
have been oppressed by this spectacle of utter 
space, of infinite distance, of forces too great 
for me to grasp or understand, but that night 
it came upon me with fresh wonder and 
power, and with a sense of great humility, 
that I belonged here too, that I was a part 
of it all — and would not be neglected or 
forgotten. It seemed to me I never had a 
moment of greater faith than that. 

And so, with a sense of satisfaction and 
peace, I returned to my fire. As I sat there 
I could hear the curious noises of the woods, 
the little droppings, cracklings, rustlings 
which seemed to make all the world alive. 
I even fancied I could see small bright eyes 
looking out at my fire, and once or twice I 
was almost sure I heard voices — whispering 
— whispering — perhaps the voices of the 
woods. 

Occasionally I added,with some amusement, 
a few dry pages of Montaigne to the fire, and 
watched the cheerful blaze that followed. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 195 

"No," said I, ''Montaigne is not for the 
open spaces and the stars. Without a roof 
over his head Montaigne would — well, die 
of sneezing!" 

So I sat all night long there by the tree. 
Occasionally I dropped into a light sleep, and 
then, as my fire died down, I grew chilly and 
awakened, to build up the fire and doze 
again. I saw the first faint gray streaks of 
dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow 
in the east before the sunrise, and I watched 
the sun himself rise upon a new day 

When I walked out into the meadow by 
daylight and looked about me curiously, 
I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn. 

'' Be you the fellow that was daown in my 
cowpastur' all night?" asked the sturdy 
farmer. 

I'm that fellow," I said. 
Why didn't you come right up to the 
house?" 

"Well " I said, and then paused. 

"Well . . ."said I. 






THE HEDGE 



1 


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^^^^^^^^p. 


1 


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1 


^^^^^^Pj 


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CHAPTER VIII 
THE HEDGE 

STRANGE, strange, how small the big 
world is! 

^'Why didn't you come right into the 
house?" the sturdy farmer had asked me 
when I came out of the meadow where I 
had spent the night under the stars. 

"Well," I said, turning the question as 
adroitly as I could, "I'll make it up by going 
into the house now." 

So I went with him into his fine, comfort- 
able house. 

"This is my wife," said he. 

A woman stood there facing me. "Oh!" 
she exclaimed, " Mr. Grayson ! " 

I recalled swiftly a child — a child she 
seemed then — with braids down her back, 
whom I had known when I first came to 

199 



200 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

my farm. She had grown up, married, 
and had borne three children, while I had 
been looking the other way for a minute 
or two. She had not been in our neighbour- 
hood for several years. 

*'And how is your sister and Doctor Mc- 
Alway.?" 

Well, we had quite a wonderful visit, and 
she made breakfast for me, asking questions 
and talking eagerly as I ate. 

''We've just had news that old Mr. 
Toombs is dead." 

"Dead!" I exclaimed, dropping my fork; 
''old Nathan Toombs!" 

"Yes, he was my uncle. Did you know 
him?" 

"I knew Nathan Toombs," I said. 

I spent two days there with the Ransomes, 
for they would not hear of my leaving, and 
half of our spare time, I think, was spent in 
discussing Nathan Toombs. I was not able 
to get him out of my mind for days, for his 
death was one of those events which prove 
so much and leave so much unproven. 

I can recall vividly my astonishment at 
the first evidence I ever had of the strange 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 201 

old man or of his work. It was not very- 
long after I came to my farm to live. I 
had taken to spending my spare evenings — 
the long evenings of summer — in exploring 
the country roads for miles around, getting 
acquainted with each farmstead, each bit 
of grove and meadow and marsh, making 
my best bow to each unfamiliar hill, and 
taking everywhere that toll of pleasure which 
comes of quiet discovery. 

One evening, having walked farther than 
usual, I came quite suddenly around a turn 
in the road and saw stretching away before 
me an extraordinary sight. 

I feel that I am conveying no adequate 
impression of what I beheld by giving it 
any such prim and decorous name as — a 
Hedge. It was a menagerie, a living, green 
menagerie! I had no sooner seen it than I 
began puzzling my brain as to whether one 
of the curious ornaments into which the 
upper part of the hedge had been clipped 
and trimmed was made to represent the head 
of a horse, or a camel, or an Egyptian sphinx. 

The hedge was of arbor vitse and as high 
as a man's waist. At more or less regular 
intervals the trees in it had been allowed 



202 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

to grow much taller and had been wonderfully 
pruned into the similitude of towers, pin- 
nacles, bells, and many other strange designs. 
Here and there the hedge held up a spindling 
umbrella of greenery, sometimes a double 
umbrella — a little one above the big one — 
and over the gateway at the centre, as a sort 
of final triumph, rose a grandiose arch of 
interlaced branches upon which the art- 
ist had outdone himself in marvels of orna- 
mentation. 

I shall never forget the sensation of delight 
I had over this discovery, or of how I walked, 
tiptoe, along the road in front, studying 
each of the marvellous adornments. How 
eagerly, too, I looked over at the house beyond 
— a rather bare, bleak house set on a slight 
knoll or elevation and guarded at one corner 
by a dark spruce tree. At some distance 
behind I saw a number of huge barns, a cat- 
tle yard and a silo — all the evidences of 
prosperity — with well-nurtured fields, now 
yellowing with the summer crops, spreading 
pleasantly away on every hand. 

It was nearly dark before I left that bit 
of roadside, and I shall never forget the 
eerie impression I had as I turned back to 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 203 

take a final look at the hedge, the strange, 
grotesque aspect it presented there in the 
half light with the bare, lonely house rising 
from the knoll behind. 

It was not until some weeks later that I 
met the owner of the wonderful hedge. 
By that time, however, having learned of 
my interest, I found the whole countryside 
alive with stories about it and about Old 
Nathan Toombs, its owner. It was as 
though I had struck the rock of refreshment 
in a weary land. 

I remember distinctly how puzzled I was 
by the stories I heard. The neighbourhood 
portrait — and ours is really a friendly neigh- 
bourhood — was by no means flattering. 
Old Toombs was apparently of that type 
of hard-shelled, grasping, self-reliant, old- 
fashioned farmer not unfamiliar to many 
countr}^ neighbourhoods. He had come of 
tough old American stock and he was a 
worker, a saver, and thus he had grown rich^ 
the richest farmer in the whole neighbourhood. 
He was a regular individualistic American. 

*'A dour man," said the Scotch Preacher, 
"but just — you must admit that he is just." 



204 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

There was no man living about whom 
the Scotch Preacher could not find some- 
thing good to say. 

"Yes, just," replied Horace, skeptically, 
"but hard — hard, and as mean as pusley." 

This portrait was true enough in itself, 
for I knew just the sort of an aggressive, 
undoubtedly irritable old fellow it pictured, 
but somehow, try as I would, I could not 
see any such old fellow wasting his moneyed 
hours clipping bells, umbrellas, and camel's 
heads on his ornamental greenery. It left 
just that incongruity which is at once the 
lure, the humour, and the perplexity of 
human life. Instead of satisfying my curi- 
osity I was more anxious than ever to see 
Old Toombs with my own eyes. 

But the weeks passed and somehow I 
did not meet him. He was a lonely, un- 
neighbourly old fellow. He had appar- 
ently come to fit into the community without 
ever really becoming a part of it. His 
neighbours accepted him as they accepted 
a hard hill in the town road. From time 
to time he would foreclose a mortgage where 
he had loaned money to some less thrifty 
farmer, or he would extend his acres by pur- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 205 

chase, hard cash down, or he would build a 
bigger barn. When any of these things 
happened the community would crowd over 
a little, as it were, to give him more room. 
It is a curious thing, and tragic, too, when 
you come to think of it, how the world lets 
alone those people who appear to want to be 
let alone. "I can live to myself," says the 
unneighbourly one. "Well, live to yourself, 
then," cheerfully responds the world, and it 
goes about its more or less amusing affairs and 
lets the unneighbourly one cut himself off. 

So our small community had let Old 
Toombs go his way with all his money, 
his acres, his hedge, and his reputation for 
being a just man. 

Not meeting him, therefore, in the familiar 
and friendly life of the neighbourhood, I 
took to walking out toward his farm, looking 
freshly at the wonderful hedge and musing 
upon that most fascinating of all subjects — 
how men come to be what they are. And 
at last I was rewarded. 

One day I had scarcely reached the end 
of the hedge when I saw Old Toombs himself 
moving toward me down the country road. 
Though I had never seen him before, I was 



2o6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

at no loss to identify him. The first and 
vital impression he gave me, if I can compress 
it into a single word, was, I think, force — 
force. He came stubbing down the country 
road with a brown hickory stick in his hand, 
which at every step he set vigorously into 
the soft earth. Though not tall, he gave the 
impression of being enormously strong. He 
was thick, solid, firm — thick through the 
body, thick through the thighs; and his 
shoulders — what shoulders they were! — 
round like a maple log; and his great head 
with its thatching of coarse iron-gray hair, 
though thrust slightly forward, seemed set 
immovably upon them. 

He presented such a forbidding appearance 
that I was of two minds about addressing 
him. Dour he was indeed! Nor shall I 
ever forget how he looked when I spoke to 
him. He stopped short there in the road. 
On his big square nose he wore a pair of 
curious spring-bowed glasses with black rims. 
For a moment he looked at me through 
these glasses, raising his chin a little, and 
then, deliberately wrinkling his nose, they 
fell off and dangled at the length of the 
faded cord by which they were hung. There 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 207 

was ^something almost uncanny about this 
peculiar habit of his and of the way in which, 
afterward, he looked at me from under 
his bushy gray brows. This was in truth 
the very man of the neighbourhood por- 
trait. 

"I am a new settler here," I said, "and 
I've been interested in looking at your won- 
derful hedge." 

The old man's eyes rested upon me a 
moment with a mingled look of suspicion 
and hostility. 

"So you've heard o' me," he said in a 
high-pitched voice, "and you've heard o' 
my hedge." 

Again he paused and looked me over. 

"Well," he said, with an indescribably 
harsh, cackling laugh, "I warrant you've 
heard nothing good o' me down there. I'm 
a skinflint, ain't I? I'm a hard citizen, ain't 
I? I grind the faces o' the poor, don't I?" 

At first his words were marked by a 
sort of bitter humour, but as he continued 
to speak his voice rose higher and higher 
until it was positively menacing. 

There were just two things I could do — 
haul down the flag and retreat ingloriously, 



2o8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

or face the music. With a sudden sense of 
rising spirits — for such things do not often 
happen to a man in a quiet country road — I 
paused a moment, looking him squarely in 
the eye. 

"Yes," I said, with great deliberation, 
* 'you've given me just about the neighbour- 
hood picture of yourself as I have had it. 
They do say you are a skinflint, yes, and a 
hard man. They say that you are rich and 
friendless; they say that while you are a just 
man, you do not know mercy. These are 
terrible things to say of any man if they are 
true." 

I paused. The old man looked for a 
moment as though he were going to strike 
me with his stick, but he neither stirred 
nor spoke. It was evidently a wholly new 
experience for him. 

"Yes," I said, "you are not popular in 
this community, but what do you suppose 
I care about that? I'm interested in your 
hedge. What I'm curious to know — and I 
might as well tell you frankly — is how such 
a man as you are reputed to be could grow 
such an extraordinary hedge. You must have 
been at it a very long time." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 209 

I was surprised at the effect of my words. 
The old man turned partly aside and looked 
for a moment along the proud and flaunting 
embattlements of the green marvel before us. 
Then he said in a moderate voice: 

^'It's a putty good hedge, a putty good 
hedge." 

"I've got him," I thought exultantly. 
"I've got him!" 

"How long ago did you start it?" I pur- 
sued my advantage eagerly. 

"Thirty-two years come spring," said he. 

"Thirty-two years!" I repeated; "you've 
been at it a long time." 

With that I plied him with questions in 
the liveliest manner, and in five minutes I 
had the gruff old fellow stumping along at 
my side and pointing out the various notable 
features of his wonderful creation. His sup- 
pressed excitement was quite wonderful to 
see. He would point his hickory stick with a 
poking motion, and,when he looked up, instead 
of throwing back his big, rough head, he 
bent at the hips, thus imparting an impression 
of astonishing solidity. 

"It took me all o' ten years to get that 
bell right," he said, and, "Take a look 



2IO THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

at that arch: now what is your opinion o' 
that?" 

Once, in the midst of our conversation, 
he checked himself abruptly and looked 
around at me with a sudden dark expres- 
sion of suspicion. I saw exactly what lay 
in his mind, but I continued my questioning 
as though I perceived no change in him. 
It was only momentary, however, and he 
was soon as much interested as before. He 
talked as though he had not had such an 
opportunity before in years — and I doubt 
whether he had. It was plain to see that 
if any one ever loved anything in this world. 
Old Toombs loved that hedge of his. Think 
of it, indeed! He had lived with it, nur- 
tured it, clipped it, groomed it — for thirty- 
two years. 

So we walked down the sloping field within 
the hedge, and it seemed as though one of 
the deep mysteries of human nature was 
opening there before me. What strange 
things men set their hearts upon! 

Thus, presently, we came nearly to the 
farther end of the hedge. Here the old 
man stopped and turned around, facing me. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 211^ 

"Do you see that valley?" he asked. 
"Do you see that slopin' valley up through 
my meadow?" 

His voice rose suddenly to a sort of high- 
pitched violence. 

"That passel o' hounds up there," he said, 
"want to build a road down my valley." 

He drew his breath fiercely. 

"They want to build a road through 
my land. They want to ruin my farm — 
they want to cut down my hedge. I'll 
fight 'em. I'll fight 'em. I'll show 'em 
yet!" 

It was appalling. His face grew purple, 
his eyes narrowed to pin points and grew red 
and angry — like the eyes of an infuriated 
boar. His hands shook. Suddenly he turned 
upon me, poising his stick in his hand, and 
said violently. 

"And who are you? Who are you? Are 
you one of these surveyor fellows ?" 

"My name," I answered as quietly as I 
could, "is Grayson. I live on the old Mather 
farm. I am not in the least interested in 
any of your road troubles." 

He looked at me a moment more, and then 
seemed to shake himself or shudder, his eyes 



212 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

dropped away and he began walking toward 
his house. He had taken only a few steps, 
however, before he turned, and, without look- 
ing at me, asked if I would like to see the 
tools he used for trimming his hedge. When 
I hesitated, for I was decidedly uncomfort- 
able, he came up to me and laid his hand 
awkwardly on my arm. 

"You'll see something, I warrant, you 
never see before." 

It was so evident that he regretted his 
outbreak that I followed him, and he showed 
me an odd double ladder set on low wheels 
which he said he used in trimming the higher 
parts of his hedge. 

"It's my own invention," he said with 
pride. 

"And that" — he pointed as we came out 
of the tool shed — "is my house — a good 
house. I planned it all myself. I never 
needed to take lessons of any carpenter I ever 
see. And there's my barns. What do you 
think o' my barns? Ever see any bigger 
ones? They ain't any bigger in this country 
than Old Toombs's barns. They don't like 
Old Toombs, but they ain't any of 'em can 
ekal his barns!" 




^ IP^: 






r II fight Vw, ril show 'em yet!' 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 213 

He followed me down to the roadside 
now quite loquacious. Even after I had 
thanked him and started to go he called after 
me. When I stopped he came forward hesita- 
tingly — and I had the impressions, suddenly, 
and for the first time that he was an old man. 
It may have been the result of his sudden 
fierce explosion of anger, but his hand shook, 
his face was pale, and he seemed somehow 
broken. 

"You — you like my hedge?" he asked. 

"It is certainly a wonderful hedge," I said. 
"I never have seen anything like it." 

"The' ainh nothing like it," he responded, 
quickly. "The' ain't nothing like it any- 
where." 

In the twilight as I passed onward I saw the 
lonely figure of the old man moving with his 
hickory stick up the pathway to his lonely 
house. The poor rich old man! 

"He thinks he can live wholly to himself," 
I said aloud. 

I thought, as I tramped homeward, of 
our friendly and kindly community, of how 
we often come together of an evening with 
skylarking and laughter, of how we weep 
with one another, of how we join in making 



214 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

better roads and better schools, and in build- 
ing up the Scotch Preacher's friendly little 
church. And in all these things Old Toombs 
has never had a part. He is not even missed. 

As a matter of fact, I reflected, and this 
is a strange, deep thing, no man is in reality 
more dependent upon the community which 
he despises and holds at arm's length than 
this same Old Nathan Toombs. Everything 
he has, everything he does, gives evidence 
of it. And I don't mean this in any mere 
material sense, though of course his wealth 
and his farm would mean no more than the 
stones in his hills to him if he did not have 
us here around him. Without our work, 
our buying, our selling, our governing, his 
dollars would be dust. But we are still 
more necessary to him in other ways: the un- 
friendly man is usually the one who demands 
most from his neighbours. Thus, if he have 
not people's love or confidence, then he will 
smite them until they fear him, or admire 
him, or hate him. Oh, no man, however he 
may try, can hold himself aloof! 

I came home deeply stirred from my visit 
with Old Toombs and lost no time in making 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 215 

further inquiries. I learned, speedily, that 
there was indeed something in the old man's 
dread of a road being built through his farm. 
The case was already in the courts. His 
farm was a very old one and extensive, and 
of recent years a large settlement of small 
farmers had been developing the rougher 
lands in the upper part of the township, 
called the Swan Hill district. Their only 
way to reach the railroad was by a rocky, 
winding road among the hills, while their 
natural outlet was down a gently sloping 
valley through Old Toombs's farm. They 
were now so numerous and politically im- 
portant that they had stirred up the town 
authorites. A proposition had been made to 
Old Toombs for a right-of-way; they argued 
with him that it was a good thing for the 
whole country, that it would enhance the 
values of his own upper lands, and that 
they would pay him far more for a right-of- 
way than the land was actually worth, but 
he had spurned them — I can imagine with 
what vehemence. 

"Let 'em drive round," he said. "Didn't 
they know what they'd hev to do when they 
settled up there .^ What a passel o' curs! 



2i6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

They can keep off o' my land, or I'll have 
the law on 'em." 

And thus the matter came to the courts 
with the town attempting to condemn the 
land for a road through Old Toombs's farm. 

"What can we do?" asked the Scotch 
Preacher, who was deeply distressed by 
the bitterness of feeling displayed. "There 
is no getting to the man. He will listen 
to no one." 

At one time I thought of going over and 
talking with Old Toombs myself, for it 
seemed that I had been able to get nearer 
to him than any one had in a long time. 
But I dreaded it. I kept dallying — for 
what, indeed, could I have said to him? 
If he had been suspicious of me before, how 
much more hostile he might be when I ex- 
pressed an interest in his difficulties. As to 
reaching the Swan Hill settlers, they were now 
aroused to an implacable state of bitterness; 
and they had the people of the whole com- 
munity with them, for no one liked Old 
Toombs. 

Thus while I hesitated time passed and 
my next meeting with Old Toombs, instead 
of being premediated, came about quite 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 217 

unexpectedly. I was walking in the town 
road late one afternoon when I heard a wagon 
rattling behind me, and then, quite suddenly, a 
shouted, "Whoa!" 

Looking around, I saw Old Toombs, his 
great solid figure mounted high on the 
wagon seat, the reins held fast in the fingers 
of one hand. I was struck by the strange 
expression in his face — a sort of grim ex- 
altation. As I stepped aside he burst out 
in a loud, shrill, cackling laugh: 

"He-he-he — he-he-he " 

I was too astonished to speak at once. 
Ordinarily when I meet any one in the town 
road it is in my heart to cry out to him, 
"Good morning, friend," or, "How are you, 
brother.?" but I had no such prompting that 
day. 

"Git in, Grayson," he said; "git In, git 
in." 

I climbed up beside him, and he slapped 
me on the knee with another burst of shrill 
laughter. 

"They thought they had the old man," he 
said, starting up his horses. "They thought 
there weren't no law left in Israel. I showed 
'em." 



21 8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I cannot convey the bitter triumphancy of 
his voice. 

"You mean the road case?" I asked. 

"Road case!" he exploded, "they wan't 
no road case; they didn't have no road case. 
I beat 'em. I says to 'em, 'What right 
hev any o' you on my property? Go round 
with you,' I says. Oh, I beat 'em. If they'd 
had their way, they'd 'a' cut through my 
hedge — the hounds!" 

When he set me down at my door I had 
said hardly a word. There seemed nothing 
that could be said. I remember I stood for 
some time watching the old man as he rode 
away, his wagon jolting in the country road, 
his stout figure perched firmly in the seat. I 
went in with a sense of heaviness at the heart. 

"Harriet," I said, "there are some things 
in this world beyond human remedy." 

Two evenings later I was surprised to see 
the Scotch Preacher drive up to my gate and 
hastily tie his horse. 

"David," said he, "there's bad business 
afoot. A lot of the young fellows in Swan Hill 
are planning a raid on Old Toombs's hedge. 
They are coming down to-night." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 219 

I got my hat and jumped in with him. 
We drove up the hilly road and out around 
Old Toombs's farm and thus came, near 
sundown, to the settlement. I had no con- 
ception of the bitterness that the lawsuit 
had engendered. 

"Where once you start men hating one 
another," said the Scotch Preacher, "there's 
utterly no end of it," 

I have seen our Scotch Preacher in many 
difficult places, but never have I seen him rise 
to greater heights than he did that night. 
It is not in his preaching that Doctor Mc- 
Alway excels, but what a power he is among 
men! He was like some stem old giant, 
standing there and holding up the portals 
of civilization. I saw men melt under his 
words like wax; I saw wild young fellows 
subdued into quietude; I saw unwise old men 
set to thinking. 

"Man, man," he'd say, lapsing in his ear- 
nestness into the broad Scotch accent of 
his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and 
destruction, and riot! You canna! Not in 
this neighbourhood!" 

"What about Old Toombs?" shouted one 
of the boys. 



220 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I never shall forget how Doctor McAlway 
drew himself up, nor the majesty that looked 
from his eye. 

"Old Toombs!" he said in a voice that 
thrilled one to the bone, "Old Toombs! 
Have you no faith, that you stand In the 
place of Almighty God and measure pun- 
ishments?" 

Before we left it was past midnight and we 
drove home, almost silent, in the darkness. 

"Doctor McAlway," I said, "if Old Toombs 
could know the history of this night it might 
change his point of view." 

"I doot it," said the Scotch Preacher. 
"I doot It." 

The night passed serenely; the morning 
saw Old Toombs's hedge standing as gor- 
geous as ever. The community had again 
stepped aside and let Old Toombs have his 
way: they had let him alone, with all his 
great barns, his wide acres and his wonderful 
hedge. He probably never even knew what 
had threatened him that night, nor how the 
forces of religion, of social order, of neigh- 
bourliness in the community which he despised 
had, after all, held him safe. 7^ There Is a 
supreme faith among common people — it Is, 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 221 

indeed, the very taproot of democracy — that 
although the unfriendly one may persist 
long in his power and arrogance, there is a 
moving Force which commands events. "^^ 

I suppose if I were wTiting a mere story I 
should tell how Old Toombs was miraculously 
softened at the age of sixty-eight years, and 
came into new relationships with his neigh- 
bours, or else I should relate how the mills of 
God, grinding slowly, had crushed the recalci- 
trant human atom Into dust. 

Either of these results conceivably might 
have happened — all things are possible — 
and being ingeniously related would somehow 
have answered a need in the human soul 
that the logic of events be constantly and 
conclusively demonstrated in the lives of 
individual men and women. 

But as a matter of fact, neither of these 
things did happen in this quiet community 
of ours. There exists, assuredly, a logic 
of events, oh, a terrible, irresistible logic of 
events, but it is careless of the span of any 
one man's life. We would like to have each 
man enjoy the sweets of his own virtues 
and suffer the lash of his own misdeeds — 
but it rarely so happens in life. No, it is 



222 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

the community which lives or dies, is regener- 
ated or marred by the deeds of men. 

So Old Toombs continued to live. So 
he continued to buy more land, raise more 
cattle, collect more interest, and the won- 
derful hedge continued to flaunt its marvels 
still more notably upon the country road. 
To what end ? Who knows ? Who knows ^ 

I saw him afterward from time to time, 
tried to maintain some sort of friendly rela- 
tions with him; but it seemed as the years 
passed that he grew ever lonelier and more 
bitter, and not only more friendless, but 
seemingly more incapable of friendliness. 
In times past I have seen what men call 
tragedies — I saw once a perfect young man 
die in his strength — but it seems to me I 
never knew anything more tragic than the 
life and death of Old Toombs. If it can- 
not be said of a man when he dies that either 
his nation, his state, his neighbourhood, his 
family, or at least his wife or child, is better 
for his having lived, what can be said for him? 

Old Toombs is dead. Like Jehoram, King 
of Judah, of whom it is terribly said in the 
Book of Chronicles, "he departed without 
being desired." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



223 



Of this story of Nathan Toombs we talked 
much and long there in the Ransome home. 
I was with them, as I said, about two days 
— kept inside most of the time by a driving 
spring rain which filled the valley with a 
pale gray mist and turned all the country 
roads into running streams. One morning, 
the weather having cleared, I swung my bag 
to my shoulder, and with much warmth of 
parting I set my face again to the free road 
and the open countr>^ 





f^^^M 


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^^^^^ %i!UU'i*ui^W-i^'^'''*''^^S^, 


1 


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Im^— 


Iv 


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THE MAN POSSESSED 








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(M^h.F^" 



.X fesi^ 



CHAPTER IX 



THE MAN POSSESSED 

I SUPPOSE I was predestined (and like- 
wise foreordained) to reach the city sooner 
or later. My fate in that respect was settled 
for me when I placed my trust in the vagrant 
road. I thought for a time that I was 
more than a match for the Road, but I soon 
learned that the Road was more than a 
match for me. Sly? There's no name for 
it. Alluring, lovable, mysterious — as the 

227 



228 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

heart of a woman. Many a time I've fol- 
lowed the Road where it led through innocent 
meadows or climbed leisurely hill slopes only 
to find that it had crept around slyly and 
led me before I knew it into .the back door 
of some busy town. 

Mostly in this country the towns squat 
low in the valleys, they lie in wait by the 
rivers, and often I scarcely know of their 
presence until I am so close upon them 
that I can smell the breath of their heated 
nostrils and hear their low growlings and 
grumblings. 

My fear of these lesser towns has never been 
profound. I have even been bold enough, 
when I came across one of them, to hasten 
straight through as though assured that Cer- 
berus was securely chained; but I found, after 
a time, what I might indeed have guessed, 
that the Road also led irresistibly to the lair 
of the Old Monster himself, the He-one of the 
species, where he lies upon the plain, lolling 
under his soiled gray blanket of smoke. 

It is wonderful to be safe at home again, 
to watch the tender, reddish brown shoots of 
the Virginia creeper reaching in at my study 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 229 

window, to see the green of my own quiet 
fields, to hear the peaceful clucking of the 
hens in the sunny dooryard — and Harriet 
humming at her work in the kitchen. 

When I left the Ransomes that fine spring 
morning, I had not the slightest presenti- 
ment of what the world held in store for me. 
After being a prisoner of the weather for 
so long, I took to the Road with fresh joy. 
All the fields were of a misty greenness and 
there were pools still shining in the road, 
but the air was deliciously clear, clean, and 
soft. I came through the hill country for 
three or four miles, even running down some 
of the steeper places for the very joy the 
motion gave me, the feel of the air on my face. 

Thus I came finally to the Great Road, 
and stood for a moment looking first this 
way, then that. 

"Where now?" I asked aloud. 

With an amusing sense of the possibil- 
ities that lay open before me, I closed my 
eyes, turned slowly around several times and 
then stopped. When I opened my eyes I 
was facing nearly southward: and that way 
I set out, not knowing in the least what 



230 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

Fortune had presided at that turning. If I 
had gone the other way 



I walked vigorously for two or three 
hours, meeting or passing many interesting 
people upon the busy road. Automobiles 
there were in plenty, and loaded wagons, and 
jolly families off for town, and a herdsman 
driving sheep, and small boys on their way to 
school with their dinner pails, and a gypsy 
wagon with lean, led horses following behind, 
and even a Jewish peddler with a crinkly 
black beard, whom I was on the very point 
of stopping. 

''I should like sometime to know a Jew," 
I said to myself. 

As I travelled, feeling like one who pos- 
sesses hidden riches, I came quite without 
warning upon the beginning of my great 
adventure. I had been looking for a certain 
thing all the morning, first on one side of 
the road, then the other, and finally I was 
rewarded. There it was, nailed high upon a 
tree, the curious, familiar sign: 




THE FRIENDLY ROAD 231 

I stopped Instantly. It seemed like an old 
friend. 

"Well," said I. "Vm not at all tired, 
but I want to be agreeable." 

With that I sat down on a convenient 
stone, took off my hat, wiped my fore- 
head, and looked about me with satisfac- 
tion, for it was a pleasant country. 

I had not been sitting there above two 
minutes when my eyes fell upon one of 
the oddest specimens of humanity (I thought 
then) that ever I saw. He had been standing 
near the roadside, just under the tree upon 
which I had seen the sign, "Rest." My heart 
dotted and carried one. 

"The sign man himself!" I exclaimed. 

I arose instantly and walked down the 
road toward him. 

"A man has only to stop anywhere here," 
I said exultantly, "and things happen." 

The stranger's appearance was indeed ex- 
traordinary. He seemed at first glimpse 
to be about twice as large around the hips 
as he was at the shoulders, but this I soon 
discovered to be due to no natural avoir- 
dupois but to the prodigious number of 
soiled newspapers and magazines with which 



232 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

the low-hanging pockets of his overcoat 
were stuffed. For he was still wearing an 
old shabby overcoat — though the weather 
was warm and bright — and on his head was 
an odd and outlandish hat. It was of fur, 
flat at the top, flat as a pie tin, with the moth- 
eaten earlaps turned up at the sides and 
looking exactly like small furry ears. These, 
with the round steel spectacles which he 
wore — the only distinctive feature of his 
countenance — gave him an indescribably 
droll appearance. 

"A fox!" I thought. 

Then I looked at him more closely. 

"No," said I, "an owl, an owl!" 

The stranger stepped out into the road 
and evidently awaited my approach. My 
first vivid impression of his face — I remem- 
ber it afterward shining with a strange 
inward illumination — was not favourable. 
It was a deep-lined, scarred, worn-looking 
face, insignificant if not indeed ugly in 
its features, and yet, even at the first glance, 
revealing something inexplainable — incal- 
culable 

"Good day, friend," I said heartily. 

Without replying to my greeting, he asked : 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 233 

"Is this the road to Kilburn?" — with a 
faint flavour of foreignness in his words. 

"I think it is," I replied, and I noticed 
as he lifted his hand to thank me that one 
finger was missing and that the hand itself 
was cruelly twisted and scarred. 

The stranger instantly set off up the Road 
without giving me much more attention 
than he would have given any other sign- 
post. I stood a moment looking after him 
— the wings of his overcoat beating about 
his legs and the small furry ears on his cap 
wagging gently. 

"There," said I aloud, "is a man who is 
actually going somewhere." 

So many men in this world are going 
nowhere in particular that when one comes 
along — even though he be amusing and in- 
significant — who is really (and passionately) 
going somewhere, what a stir he commun- 
icates to a dull world! We catch sparks of 
electricity from the very friction of his passage. 

It was so with this odd stranger. Though 
at one moment I could not help smiling at 
him, at the next I was following him. 

"It may be," said I to myself, "that 
this is really the sign man!" 



234 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I felt like Captain Kidd under full sail to 
capture a treasure ship; and as I approached, 
I was much agitated as to the best method 
of grappling and boarding. I finally de- 
cided, being a lover of bold methods, to let 
go my largest gun first — for moral e0"ect. 

"So," said I, as I ran alongside, "you 
are the man who puts up the signs." 

He stopped and looked at me. 

"What signs?" 

"Why the sign 'Rest' along this road." 

He paused for some seconds with a per- 
plexed expression on his face. 

"Then you are not the sign man," I 
said. 

"No," he replied, "I ain't any sign man." 

I was not a little disappointed, but having 
made my attack, I determined to see if 
there was any treasure aboard — which, I 
suppose, should be the procedure of any well- 
regulated pirate. 

"I'm going this way myself," I said, 
"and if you have no objections " 

He stood looking at me curiously, indeed 
suspiciously, through his round spectacles. 

"Have you got the passport?" he asked 
finally. 




So you are the man zcho puts up the signs 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 235 

"The passport!" I exclaimed, mystified In 
my turn. 

"Yes," said he, "the passport. Let me 
see your hand." 

When I held out my hand he looked at 
it closely for a moment, and then took it 
with a quick warm pressure in one of his, 
and gave it a little shake, in a way not quite 
American. 

"You are one of us," said he, "you work." 

I thought at first that it was a bit of 
pleasantry, and I was about to return it 
in kind when I saw plainly in his face a 
look of solemn intent. 

"So," he said, "we shall travel like com- 
rades." 

He thrust his scarred hand through my arm, 
and we walked up the road side by side, his 
bulging pockets beating first against his legs 
and then against mine, quite impartially. 

"I think," said the stranger, "that we 
shall be arrested at Kilburn." 

"We shall!" I exclaimed with something, 
I admit, of a shock. 

"Yes," he said, "but It is all In the day's 
work." 

"How Is that?" 



236 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

He stopped in the road and faced me. 
Throwing back his overcoat he pointed to 
a small red button on his coat lapel. 

"They don't want me in Kilburn," said 
he, "the mill men are strikin' there, and the 
bosses have got armed men on every corner. 
Oh, the capitalists are watchin' for me, all 
right." 

I cannot convey the strange excitement 
I felt. It seemed as though these words 
suddenly opened a whole new world around 
me — a w^orld I had heard about for years, 
but never entered. And the tone in which 
he had used the word "capitalist!" I had 
almost to glance around to make sure that 
there were no ravening capitalists hiding be- 
hind the trees. 

"So you are a Socialist," I said. 

"Yes," he answered. "I'm one of those 
dangerous persons." 

First and last I have read much of Socialism, 
and thought about it, too, from the quiet 
angle of my farm among the hills, but this 
was the first time I had ever had a live So- 
cialist on my arm. I could not have been 
more surprised if the stranger had said, "Yes, 
I am Theodore Roosevelt." 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 237 

One of the discoveries we keep making 
all our life long (provided we remain humble) 
is the humorous discovery of the ordinari- 
ness of the extraordinary. Here was this 
disrupter of society, this man of the red flag — 
here he was with his mild spectacled eyes and 
his furry ears wagging as he walked. It was 
unbelievable! — and the sun shining on him 
quite as Impartially as it shone on me. 

Coming at last to a pleasant bit of wood- 
land, where a stream ran under the roadway, 
I said: 

"Stranger, let's sit down and have a 
bite of luncheon." 

He began to expostulate, said he was 
expected in Kilburn. 

"Oh, I've plenty for two," I said, "and 
I can say, at least, that I am a firm believer 
In cooperation." 

Without more urging he followed me into 
the woods, where we sat down comfortably 
under a tree. 

Now, when I take a fine thick sandwich 
out of my bag, I always feel like making it 
a polite bow, and before I bite into a big 
brown doughnut, I am tempted to say, 
"By your leave, madam," and as for mince 



238 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

PIE — Beau Brummel himself could not outdo 
me in respectful consideration. But Bill 
Hahn neither saw, nor smelled, nor, I think, 
tasted Mrs. Ransome's cookery. As soon 
as we sat down he began talking. From time 
to time he would reach out for another 
sandwich or doughnut or pickle (without 
knowing in the least which he was getting), 
and when that was gone some reflex impulse 
caused him to reach out for some more. 
When the last crumb of our luncheon had 
disappeared Bill Hahn still reached out. 
His hand groped absently about, and coming 
in contact with no more doughnuts or pickles 
he withdrew it — and did not know, I think, 
that the meal was finished. (Confidentially, 
I have speculated on what might have hap- 
pened if the supply had been unlimited!) 

But that was Bill Hahn. Once started 
on his talk, he never thought of food or 
clothing or shelter; but his eyes glowed, 
his face lighted up with a strange efful- 
gence, and he quite lost himself upon the 
tide of his own oratory. I saw him after- 
ward by a flare-light at the centre of a 
great crowd of men and women — but that 
is getting ahead of my story. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 239 

His talk bristled with such words as 
"capitalism," "proletariat," "class-conscious- 
ness" — and he spoke with fluency of "eco- 
nomic determinism" and "syndicalism." It 
was quite wonderful! And from time to 
time, he would bring in a smashing quota- 
tion from Aristotle, Napoleon, Karl Marr, or 
Eugene V. Debs, giving them all equal values, 
and he cited statistics! — oh, marvellous sta- 
tistics, that never were on sea or land. 

Once he was so swept away by his own 
eloquence that he sprang to his feet and, 
raising one hand high above his head (quite 
unconscious that he was holding up a dill 
pickle), he worked through one of his most 
thrilling periods. 

Yes, I laughed, and yet there was so 
brave a simplicity about this odd, absurd 
little man that what I laughed at was only 
his outward appearance (and that he himself 
had no care for), and all the time I felt a 
growing respect and admiration for him. 
He was not only sincere, but he was genuinely 
simple — a much higher virtue, as Fenelon says. 
For while sincere people do not aim at ap- 
pearing anything but what they are, they 
are always in fear of passing for something 



240 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

they are not. They are forever thinking 
about themselves, weighing all their words 
and thoughts and dwelling upon what they 
have done, in the fear of having done too 
much or too little, whereas simplicity, as 
Fenelon says, is an uprightness of soul 
which has ceased wholly to dwell upon 
itself or its actions. Thus there are plenty 
of sincere folk in the world but few who are 
simple. 

Well, the longer he talked, the less in- 
terested I was in what he said and the more 
fascinated I became in what he was. I felt 
a wistful interest in him: and I wanted to 
know what way he took to purge himself of 
himself. I think if I had been in that group, 
nineteen hundred years ago, which surrounded 
the beggar who was born blind, but whose 
anointed eyes now looked out upon the 
glories of the world, I should have been 
among the questioners : 

*'What did he to thee? How opened he 
thine eyes?" 

I tried ineifectually several times to break 
the swift current of his oratory and finally 
succeeded (when he paused a moment to 
finish off a bit of pie crust). 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 241 

"You must have seen some hard ex- 
periences in your life," I said. 

''That I have," responded Bill Hahn, 
"the capItaHstic system " 

"Did you ever work in the mills your- 
self?" I interrupted hastily. 

"Boy and man," said Bill Hahn, "I 
worked in that hell for thirty-two years — 
The class-conscious proletariat have only 
to exert themselves " 

"And your wife, did she work too — 
and your sons and daughters?" 

A spasm of pain crossed his face. 

"My daughter?" he said. "They killed 
her in the mills." 

It was appalling — the dead level of the 
tone in which he uttered those words — the 
monotone of an emotion long ago burned out, 
and yet leaving frightful scars. 

"My friend!" I exclaimed, and I could 
not help laying my hand on his arm. 

I had the feeling I often have with troubled 
children — an indescribable pity that they have 
had to pass through the valley of the shadow, 
and I not there to take them by the hand. 

"And was this — your daughter — what 
brought you to your present belief?" 



242 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"No," said he, "oh, no. I was a Socialist, 
as you might say, from youth up. That is, 
I called myself a Socialist, but, comrade, I've 
learned this here truth: that it ain't of so 
/ much importance that you possess a belief, 
as that the belief possess you. Do you 
understand?" 

"I think," said I, "that I understand.'* 

Well, he told me his story, mostly in 
a curious, dull, detached way — as though 
he were speaking of some third person 
in whom he felt only a brotherly interest, 
but from time to time some incident or 
observation would flame up out of the nar- 
rative, like the opening of the door of a 
molten pit — so that the glare hurt one! — 
and then the story would die back again into 
quiet narrative. 

Like most working people he had never 
lived in the twentieth century at all. He was 
still in the feudal age, and his whole life had 
been a blind and ceaseless struggle for the 
bare necessaries of life, broken from time 
to time by fierce irregular wars called strikes. 
He had never known anything of a real self- 
governing commonwealth, and such progress 
as he and his kind had made was never the 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 243 

result of their citizenship, of their powers as 
voters, but grew out of the explosive and 
ragged upheavals of their own half-organized 
societies and unions. 

It was against the "black people" he said 
that he was first on strike back in the early 
nineties. He told me all about it, how he had 
been working in the mills pretty comfortably 
— he was young and strong then, with a fine 
growing family and a small home of his own. 

"It was as pretty a place as you would 
want to see," he said; "we grew cabbages 
and onions and turnips — everything grew 
fine! — in the garden behind the house." 

And then the "black people" began to come 
in, little by little at first, and then by the 
carload. By the "black people" he meant 
the people from Southern Europe, he called 
them "hordes" — "hordes and hordes of 
'em" — Italians mostly, and they began 
getting into the mills and underbidding for 
the jobs, so that wages slowly went down and 
at the same time the machines were speeded 
up. It seems that many of these "black peo- 
ple" were single men or vigorous young mar- 
ried people with only themselves to support, 
while the old American workers were men 



244 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

with families and little homes to pay for, 
and plenty of old grandfathers and grand- 
mothers, to say nothing of babies, depending 
upon them. 

*' There wasn't a living for a decent family 
left," he said. 

So they struck — and he told me in his 
dull monotone of the long bitterness of that 
strike, the empty cupboards, the approach 
of winter with no coal for the stoves and no 
warm clothing for the children. He told 
me that many of the old workers began to 
leave the town (some bound for the larger 
cities, some for the Far West). 

"But," said he with a sudden outburst 
of emotion, "I couldn't leave. I had the 
woman and the children!" 

And presently the strike collapsed, and 
the workers rushed helter skelter back to the 
mills to get their old jobs. "Begging like 
whipped dogs," he said bitterly. 

Many of them found their places taken 
by the eager "black people," and many had 
to go to work at lower wages in poorer places 
— punished for the fight they had made. 

But he got along somehow, he said — 
*the woman was a good manager" — until 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 245 

one day he had the misfortune to get his 
hand caught in the machinery. It was a 
place which should have been protected 
with guards, but was not. He was laid up 
for several weeks, and the company, claiming 
that the accident was due to his own stupidity 
and carelessness, refused even to pay his 
wages while he was idle. Well, the family 
had to live somehow, and the woman and 
the daughter — ^'she was a little thing," he 
said, "and frail" — the woman and the 
daughter went into the mill. But even with 
this new source of income they began to fall 
behind. Money which should have gone 
toward making the last payments on their 
home (already long delayed by the strike) 
had now to go to the doctor and the grocer. 

" We had to live," said Bill Hahn. 

Again and again he used this same phrase, 
"We had to live!" as a sort of bedrock ex- 
planation for all the woes of life. 

After a time, with one finger gone and 
a frightfully scarred hand — he held it up for 
me to see — he went back into the mill. 

"But it kept getting worse and worse," 
said he, "and finally I couldn't stand it any 
longer." 



246 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

He and a group of friends got together 
secretly and tried to organize a union, tried to 
get the workmen together to improve their 
own condition; but in some way ("they had 
spies everywhere," he said) the manager 
learned of the attempt and one morning 
when he reported at the mill he was handed 
a slip asking him to call for his wages, that 
his help was no longer required. 

''I'd been with that one company for 
twenty years and four months," he said 
bitterly, "I'd helped in my small way to 
build it up, make it a big concern payin' 28 
per cent, dividends every year; I'd given 
part of my right hand in doin' it — and they 
threw me out like an old shoe." 

He said he would have pulled up and gone 
away, but he still had the little home and 
the garden, and his wife and daughter were 
still at work, so he hung on grimly, trying to 
get some other job. "But what good is a 
man for any other sort of work," he said, 
"when he has been trained to the mills for 
thirty- two years ! " 

It was not very long after that when the 
"great strike" began — indeed, it grew out 
of the organization which he had tried to 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 247 

launch — and Bill Hahn threw himself into 
it with all his strength. He was one of the 
leaders. I shall not attempt to repeat here 
his description of the bitter struggle, the 
coming of the soldiery, the street riots, the 
long lists of arrests ("some," said he, "got 
into jail on purpose, so that they could at 
least have enough to eat!"), the late meetings 
of strikers, the wild turmoil and excitement. 

Of all this he told me, and then he stopped 
suddenly, and after a long pause he said in 
a low voice : 

"Comrade, did ye ever see your wife and 
your sickly daughter and your kids sufferin' 
for bread to eat?" 

He paused again with a hard, dry sob 
in his voice. 

"Did ye ever see that?" 

"No," said I, very humbly, "I have 
never seen anything like that." 

He turned on me suddenly, and I shall never 
forget the look on his face, nor the blaze 
in his eyes : 

"Then what can you know about working- 
men!" 

What could I answer? 

A moment passed and then he said, as if a 



248 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

little remorseful at having turned thus upon 
me: 

"Comrade, I tell you, the iron entered my 
soul — them days." 

It seems that the leaders of the strike were 
mostly old employees like Bill Hahn, and 
the company had conceived the idea that 
if these men could be eliminated the organi- 
zation would collapse, and the strikers be 
forced back to work. One day Bill Hahn 
found that proceedings had been started to 
turn him out of his home, upon which he 
had not been able to keep up his payments, 
and at the same time the merchant, of whom 
he had been a respected customer for years, 
refused to give him any further credit. 

"But we lived somehow," he said, "we 
lived and we fought." 

It was then that he began to see clearly 
what it all meant. He said he made a 
great discovery: that the "black people" 
against whom they had struck in 1894 
were not to blame! 

"I tell you," said he, "we found when we 
got started that them black people — we used 
to call 'em dagoes — were just workin' people 
like us — and in hell with us. They were 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 249 

good soldiers, them Eyetalians and Poles and 
Syrians, they fought with us to the end." 

I shall not soon forget the intensely dramatic 
but perfectly simple way in which he told 
me how he came, as he said, "to see the true 
light." Holding up his maimed right hand 
(that trembled a little), he pointed one finger 
upward. 

"I seen the big hand in the sky," he said, 
''I seen it as clear as daylight." 

He said he saw at last what Socialism meant. 

One day he went home from a strikers' 
meeting — one of the last, for the men were 
worn out with their long struggle. It was 
a bitter cold day, and he was completely 
discouraged. When he reached his own street 
he saw a pile of household goods on the side- 
walk in front of his home. He saw his wife 
there wringing her hands and crying. He 
said he could not take a step further, but sat 
down on a neighbour's porch and looked and 
looked. "It was curious," he said, "but 
the only thing I could see or think about was 
our old family clock which they had stuck 
on top of the pile, half tipped over. It 
looked odd and I wanted to set it up straight. 
It was the clock we bought when we were 



2SO THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

married, and we'd had it about twenty years 
on the mantel in the livin'-room. It was a 
good clock," he said. 

He paused and then smiled a little. 

"I never have figured it out why I should 
have been able to think of nothing but that 
clock," he said, ''but so it was." 

When he got home, he found his frail 
daughter just coming out of the empty house, 
''coughing as though she was dyin'." Some- 
thing, he said, seemed to stop inside of him. 
Those were his words: "Something seemed 
to stop inside 'o me." 

He turned away without saying a word, 
walked back to strike headquarters, bor- 
rowed a revolver from a friend, and started 
out along the main road which led into the 
better part of the town. 

"Did you ever hear o' Robert Winter?" 
he asked. 

"No," said I. 

"Well, Robert Winter was the biggest 
gun of 'em all. He owned the mills there, 
and the largest store and the newspaper — 
he pretty nearly owned the town." 

He told me much more about Robert 
Winter which betrayed still a curious sort 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 251 

of feudal admiration for him, and for his 
great place and power; but I need not dwell 
on it here. He told me how he climbed 
in through a hemlock hedge (for the stone 
gateway was guarded) and walked through 
the snow toward the great house. 

"An' all the time I seemed to be seein' 
my daughter Margy right there before my eyes 
coughing as though she was dyin'." 

It was just nightfall and all the windows 
were alight. He crept up to a clump of 
bushes under a window and waited there a 
moment while he drew out and cocked his 
revolver. Then he slowly reached upward 
until his head cleared the sill and he could look 
into the room. *'A big, warm room," he 
described it. 

"Comrade," said he, "I had murder in 
my heart that night." 

So he stood there looking in with the 
revolver ready cocked in his hand. 

"And what do you think I seen there?" 
he asked. 

"I cannot guess," I said. 

"Well," said Bill Hahn, "I seen the great 
Robert Winter that we had been fighting 
for five long months — and he was down on 



252 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

his hands and knees on the carpet — and 
he had his little daughter on his back — 
and he was creepin' about with her — an' 
she was laughin'." 

Bill Hahn paused. 

"I had a bead on him," he said finally, "but 
I couldn't do it — I just couldn't do it." 

He came away all weak and trembling 
and cold, and, "Comrade," he said, "I was 
cryin' like a baby, and didn't know why." 

The next day the strike collapsed and 
there was the familiar stampede for work — 
but Bill Hahn did not go back. He knew 
it would be useless. A week later his frail 
daughter died and was buried in the pauper's 
field. 

"She was as truly killed," he said, "as 
though some one had fired a bullet at her 
through a window." 

"And what did you do after that.^" I 
asked, when he had paused for a long time 
with his chin on his breast. 

"Well," said he, "I did a lot of thinking 
them days, and I says to myself: 'This 
thing is wrong, and I will go out and stop it — 
I will go out and stop it.' " 

As he uttered these words, I looked at him 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 253 

curiously — his absurd flat fur hat with the 
moth-eaten ears, the old bulging overcoat, 
the round spectacles, the scarred, insignificant 
face — he seemed somehow transformed, a per- 
son elevated above himself, the tool of some 
vast incalculable force. 

I shall never forget the phrase he used 
to describe his own feelings when he had 
reached this astonishing decision to go out 
and stop the wrongs of the world. He said 
he ''began to feel all clean inside." 

"I see it didn't matter what become o' me, 
and I began to feel all clean inside." 

It seemed, he explained, as though some- 
thing big and strong had got hold of him, 
and he began to be happy. 

''Since then," he said in a low voice, 
''I've been happier than I ever was before 
In all my life. I ain't got any family, nor any 
home — rightly speakin' — nor any money, 
but, comrade, you see here in front of you, 
a happy man." 

When he had finished his story we sat 
quiet for some time. 

"Well," said he, finally, "I must be goin'. 
The committee will wonder what's become 



o' me." 



254 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I followed him out to the road. There 
I put my hand on his shoulder, and said: 

"Bill Hahn, you are a better man than 
I am." 

He smiled, a beautiful smile, and we walked 
oif together down the road. 

I wish I had gone on with him at that 
time into the city, but somehow I could 
not do it. I stopped near the top of the 
hill where one can see in the distance that 
smoky huddle of buildings which is known 
"as Kilburn, and though he urged me, I 
turned aside and sat down in the edge of a 
meadow. There were many things I wanted 
to think about, to get clear in my mind. 

As I sat looking out toward that great 
city, I saw three men walking in the white 
road. As I watched them, I could see 
them coming quickly, eagerly. Presently 
they threw up their hands and evidently 
began to shout, though I could not hear 
what they said. At that moment I saw my 
friend Bill Hahn running in the road, his 
coat skirts flapping heavily about his legs. 
When they met they almost fell into one 
another's arms. 

I suppose It was so that the early Chris- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 



^S5 



tians, those who hid in the Roman catacombs, 
were wont to greet one another. 

So I sat thinking. 

"A man," I said to myself, ''who can 
regard himself as a function, not an end of 
creation, has arrived." 

, After a time I got up and walked down the 
hill — some strange force carrying me on- 
ward — and came thus to the city of Kilburn. 




I AM CAUGHT UP INTO LIFE 





CHAPTER X 
I AM CAUGHT UP INTO LIFE 



I CAN scarcely convey in written words 
the whirling emotions I felt when I 
entered the city of Kilburn. Every sight, 
every sound, recalled vividly and painfully 
the unhappy years I had once spent in another 
and greater city. Every mingled odour of the 
streets — and there is nothing that will so 
surely re-create (for me) the inner emotion 
of a time or place as a remembered odour — 
brought back to me the incidents of that 
immemorial existence. 

For a time, I confess it frankly here, I 

259 



26o THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

felt afraid. More than once I stopped short 
in the street where I was walking, and con- 
sidered turning about and making again for 
the open country. Some there may be who 
will feel that I am exaggerating my sensations 
and impressions, but they do not know of my 
memories of a former life, nor of how, many 
years ago, I left the city quite defeated, 
glad indeed that I was escaping, and thinking 
(as I have related elsewhere) that I should 
never again set foot upon a paved street. 
These things went deep with me. Only 
the other day, when a friend asked me how 
old I was, I responded instantly — our un- 
premeditated words are usually truest — with 
the date of my arrival at this farm. 

"Then you are only ten years old!" he ex- 
claimed with a laugh, thinking I was joking. 

''Well," I said, "I am counting only the 
years worth living." 

No; I existed, but I never really lived 
until I was reborn, that wonderful summer, 
here among these hills. 

I said I felt afraid in the streets of Kil- 
burn, but it was no physical fear. Who 
could be safer in a city than the man who 
has not a penny in his pockets .f^ It was 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 261 

rather a strange, deep, spiritual shrinking. 
There seemed something so irresistible about 
this life of the city, so utterly overpowering. 
I had a sense of being smaller than I had 
previously felt myself, that in some way my 
personality, all that was strong or interesting 
or original about me, was being smudged 
over, rubbed out. In the country I had 
in some measure come to command life, but 
here, it seemed to me, life was commanding 
me and crushing me down. It is a difficult 
thing to describe: I never felt just that way 
before. 

I stopped at last on the main street of 
Kilburn in the very heart of the town. I 
stopped because it seemed necessary to me, 
like a man in a flood, to touch bottom, to 
get hold upon something immovable and 
stable. It was just at that hour of evening 
when the stores and shops are pouring forth 
their rivulets of humanity to join the vast 
flood of the streets. I stepped quickly aside 
into a niche near the corner of an immense 
building of brick and steel and glass, and 
there I stood with my back to the wall, 
and I watched the restless, whirling, tor- 
rential tide of the streets. I felt again, 



262 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

as I had not felt it before in years, the mys- 
terious urge of the city — the sense of un- 
ending, overpowering movement. 

There was another strange, indeed un- 
canny, sensation that began to creep over 
me as I stood there. Though hundreds 
upon hundreds of men and women were 
passing me every minute, not one of them 
seemed to see me. Most of them did not 
even 'look in my direction, and those who 
did turn their eyes toward me seemed to 
glance through me to the building behind. 
I wonder if this is at all a common experi- 
ence, or whether I was unduly sensitive 
that day, unduly wrought up? I began 
to feel like one clad in garments of invis- 
ibility. I could see, but was not seen. I 
could feel, but was not felt. In the country 
there are few who would not stop to speak 
to me, or at least appraise me with their 
eyes ; but here I was a wraith, a ghost — 
not a palpable human being at all. For a mo- 
ment I felt unutterably lonely. 

It is this way with me. When I have 
reached the very depths of any serious situa- 
tion or tragic emotion, something within me 
seems at last to stop — how shall I describe 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 263 

It? — and I rebound suddenly and see the 
world, as it were, double — see that my con- 
dition instead of being serious or tragic is in 
reality amusing — and I usually came out 
of it with an utterly absurd or whimsical 
idea. It was so upon this occasion. I think 
it was the image of my robust self as ^ a 
wraith that did it. 

"After all," I said aloud taking a firm 
hold on the good hard flesh of one of my 
legs, "this is positively David Grayson." 

I looked out again into that tide of faces 
— interesting, tired, passive, smiling, sad, but 
above all, preoccupied faces. 

"No one," I thought, "seems to know 
that David Grayson has come to town." 

I had the sudden, almost irresistible notion 
of climbing up a step near me, holding up 
one hand, and crying out: 

"Here I am, my friends. I am David 
Grayson. I am real and solid and opaque;' 
I have plenty of red blood running in my 
veins. I assure you that I am a person 
well worth knowing." 

I should really have enjoyed some such 
outlandish enterprise, and I am not at all 
sure yet that it would not have brought 



264 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

me adventures and made me friends worth 
while. We fail far more often by under-daring 
than by over-daring. 

But this imaginary object had the result, 
at least, of giving me a new grip on things. 
I began to look out upon the amazing spec- 
tacle before me in a different mood. It was 
exactly like some enormous anthill into which 
an idle traveller had thrust his cane. Every- 
where the ants were running out of their 
tunnels and burrows, many carrying burdens 
and giving one strangely the impression 
that while they were intensely alive and 
active, not more than half of them had any 
clear idea of where they were going. And 
serious, deadly serious, in their haste! I felt 
a strong inclination to stop a few of them 
and say: 

"Friends, cheer up. It isn't half as bad 
as you think it is. Cheer up ! " 

After a time the severity of the human 
flood began to abate, and here and there 
at the bottom of that gulch of a street, 
which had begun to fill with soft, bluish- 
gray shadows, the evening lights appeared. 
The air had grown cooler; in the distance 
around a corner I heard a street organ break 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 265 

suddenly and joyously into the lively strains 
of "The Wearin' o' the Green." 

I stepped out into the street with quite a 
new feeling of adventure. And as if to testify 
that I was now a visible person a sharp-eyed 
newsboy discovered me — the first human 
being in Kilburn who had actually seen me 
— and came up with a paper in his hand. 

''Herald, boss?" 

I was interested in the shrewd, world- 
wise, humorous look in the urchin's eyes. 

"No," I began, with the full intent of 
bantering him into some sort of acquaint- 
ance; but he evidently measured my pur- 
chasing capacity quite accurately, for he 
turned like a flash to another customer. 

"i7^m/^,boss?" 

"You'll have to step lively, David Gray- 
son," I said to myself, "if you get aboard 
in this city." 

A slouchy negro with a cigarette in his 
fingers glanced at me in passing and then, 
hesitating, turned quickly toward me. 

"Got a match, boss?" 

I gave him a match. 

"Thank you, boss," and he passed on 
down the street. 



266 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

^'I seem to be 'boss' around here," I said. 

This contact, slight as it was, gave me a 
feeling of warmth, removed a little the sensa- 
tion of aloofness I had felt, and I strolled 
slowly down the street, looking in at the gay 
windows, now ablaze with lights, and watching 
the really wonderful procession of vehicles 
of all shapes and sizes that rattled by on the 
pavement. Even at that hour of the day I 
think there were more of them in one minute 
than I see in a whole month at my farm. 

It's a great thing to wear shabby clothes 
and an old hat. Some of the best things 
I have ever known, like these experiences 
of the streets, have resulted from coming up 
to life from underneath; of being taken for 
less than I am rather than for more than 
I am. 

I did not always believe in this doctrine. 
For many years — the years before I was 
rightly born into this alluring world — I 
tried quite the opposite course. I was con- 
stantly attempting to come down to life from 
above. Instead of being content to carry 
through life a sufficiently wonderful being 
named David Grayson I tried desperately 
to set up and support a sort of dummy crea- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 267 

ture which, so clad, so housed, so fed, should 
appear to be what I thought David Grayson 
ought to appear in the eyes of the world- 
Oh, I spent quite a lifetime trying to satisfy 
other people! 

Once I remember staying at home, in bed, 
reading ''Huckleberry Finn," while I sent 
my trousers out to be mended. 

Well, that dummy Grayson perished in a 
cornfield. His empty coat served well for 
a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out 
through a hole in his finest hat. 

And I — the man within — I escaped, 
and have been out freely upon the great ad- 
venture of life. 

If a shabby coat (and I speak here also 
symbolically, not forgetful of spiritual sig- 
nificances) lets you into the adventurous 
world of those who are poor it does not on the 
other hand rob you of any true friendship 
among those who are rich or mighty. I say 
true friendship, for unless a man who is rich 
and mighty is able to see through my shabby 
coat (as I see through his fine one), I shall 
gain nothing by knowing him. 

I've permitted myself all this digression 
— left myself walking alone there in the 



268 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

streets of Kilburn while I philosophized 
upon the ways and means of life — not 
without design, for I could have had no 
such experiences as I did have in Kilburn 
if I had worn a better coat or carried upon 
me the evidences of security in life. 

I think I have already remarked upon the 
extraordinary enlivenment of wits which 
comes to the man who has been without a 
meal or so and does not know when or where 
he is again to break his fast. Try it, friend, 
and see! It was already getting along in the 
evening, and I knew or supposed I knew no 
one in Kilburn save only Bill Hahn, Socialist, 
who was little better off than I was. 

In this emergency my mind began to work 
swiftly. A score of fascinating plans for get- 
ting my supper and a bed to sleep in flashed 
through my mind. 

"Why," said I, "when I come to think 
of it, I'm comparatively rich. I'll warrant 
there are plenty of places in Kilburn, and 
good ones, too, where I could barter a chapter 
of Montaigne and a little good conversation 
for a first-rate supper, and I've no doubt 
that I could whistle up a bed almost any- 
where!" 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 269 

I thought of a little motto I often repeat 
to myself: 

To know life, begin anywhere! 

There were several people on the streets 
of Kilburn that night who don't know yet 
how very near they were to being boarded 
by a somewhat shabby looking farmer who 
would have offered them, let us say, a notable 
musical production called "Old Dan Tucker," 
exquisitely performed on a tin whistle, in ex- 
change for a good honest supper. 

There was one man in particular — a 
fine, pompous citizen who came down the 
street swinging his cane and looking as 
though the universe was a sort of Christmas 
turkey, lying all brown and sizzling before 
him ready to be carved — a fine pompous 
citizen who never realized how nearly Fate 
with a battered volume of Montaigne in one 
hand and a tin whistle in the other — came 
to pouncing upon him that evening! And 
I am firmly convinced that if I had attacked 
him with the Great Particular Word he 
would have carved me off a juicy slice of the 
white breast meat. 



270 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"I'm getting hungry," I said; "I must 
find Bill Hahn!" 

I had turned down a side street, and see- 
ing there in front of a building a number 
of lounging men with two or three cabs 
or carriages standing nearby in the street 
I walked up to them. It was a livery 
bam. 

Now I like all sorts of out-of-door peo- 
ple:^ I seem to be related to them through 
horses and cattle and cold winds and sunshine. 
I like them and understand them, and they 
seem to like me and understand me. So I 
walked up to the group of jolly drivers and 
stablemen intending to ask my directions. 
The talking died out and they all turned to 
look at me. I suppose I was not altogether 
a familiar type there in the city streets. 
My bag, especially, seemed to set me apart 
as a curious person. 

"Friends," I said, "I am a farmer " 

They all broke out laughing; they seemed 
to know it already! I was just a little taken 
aback, but I laughed, too, knowing that there 
was a way of getting at them if only I could 
find it. 

"It may surprise you," I said, "but this 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 271 

is the first time in some dozen years that 
I've been in a big city like this." 

"You nadn't 'ave told us, partner!" said 
one of them, evidently the wit of the group, 
in a rich Irish brogue. 

"Well," I responded, laughing with the 
rest of them, "you've been living right 
here all the time, and don't realize how 
amusing and curious the city looks to me. 
Why, I feel as though I had been away 
sleeping for twenty years, like Rip Van 
Winkle. When I left the city there was 
scarcely an automobile to be seen anywhere 
— and now look at them snorting through 
the streets. I counted twenty-two passing 
that corner up there in five minutes by the 
clock." 

This was a fortunate remark, for I found 
instantly that the invasion of the automobile 
was a matter of tremendous import to such 
Knights of Bucephalus as these. 

At first the wit interrupted me with amusing 
remarks, as wits will, but I soon had him as 
quiet as the others. For I have found the 
things that chiefly interest people are the 
things they already know about — provided 
you show them that these common things 



272 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

are still mysterious, still miraculous, as indeed 
they are. 

After a time some one pushed me a stable 
stool and I sat down among them, and we 
had quite a conversation, which finally de- 
veloped into an amusing comparison (I wish 
I had room to repeat it here) between the city 
and the country. I told them something 
about my farm, how much I enjoyed it, 
and what a wonderful free life one had in 
the country. In this I was really taking an 
unfair advantage of them, for I was trading 
on the fact that every man, down deep in his 
heart, has more or less of an instinct to get 
back to the soil — at least all outdoor men 
have. And when I described the simplest 
things about my barn, and the cattle and 
pigs, and the bees — and the good things we 
have to eat — I had every one of them leaning 
forward and hanging on my words. 

Harriet sometimes laughs at me for the 
way I celebrate farm life. She says all my 
apples are the size of Hubbard squashes, my 
eggs all double-yolked, and my cornfields trop- 
ical jungles. Practical Harriet! My apples 
may not all be the size of Hubbard squashes, 
but they are good, sizable apples, and as 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 273 

for flavour — all the spices of Arcady ! 

And I believe, I know, from my own expe- 
rience that these fields and hills are capable 
of healing men's souls. And when I see peo- 
ple wandering around a lonesome city like 
Kilburn, with never a soft bit of soil to 
put their heels into, nor a green thing to cul- 
tivate, nor any corn or apples or honey to 
harvest, I feel — well, that they are wasting 
their time. 

(It's a fact, Harriet!) 

Indeed, I had the most curious experi- 
ence with my friend the wit — his name 
I soon learned was Healy — a jolly, round, 
red-nosed, outdoor chap with fists that looked 
like small-sized hams, and a rich, warm 
Irish voice. At first he was inclined to use 
me as the ready butt of his lively mind, 
but presently he became so much interested 
in what I was saying that he sat squarely 
in front of me with both his jolly eyes and 
his smiling mouth wide open. 

*'If ever you pass my way," I said to 
him, "just drop in and I'll give you a din- 
ner of baked beans" — and I smacked — "and 
home made bread" — and I smacked again 



274 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

— ''and pumpkin pie" — and I smacked a 
third time — "that will make your mouth 
water." 

All this smacking and the description of 
baked beans and pumpkin pie had an odd 
counter effect upon me; for I suddenly recalled 
my own tragic state. So I jumped up quickly 
and asked directions for getting down to the 
mill neighbourhood, where I hoped to find 
Bill Hahn. My friend Healy instantly vol- 
unteered the information. 

''And now," I said, "I want to ask a small 
favour of you. I'm looking for a friend, 
and I'd like to leave my bag here for the night." 

"Sure, sure," said the Irishman heartily. 
"Put it there in the office — on top o' the 
desk. It'll be all right." 

So I put it in the office and was about to 
say good-bye, when my friend said to me: 

"Come in, partner, and have a drink 
before you go" — and he pointed to a nearby 
saloon. 

"Thank you," I answered heartily, for 
I knew it was as fine a bit of hospitality as 
he could offer me, "thank you, but I must 
find my friend before it gets too late." 

"Aw, come on now," he cried, taking 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 275 

my arm. " Sure you'll be better off for a 
bit o' warmth inside." 

I had hard work to get away from them, 
and I am as sure as can be that they would 
have found supper and a bed for me if they 
had known I needed either. 

''Come agin," Healy shouted after me, 
''we're glad to see a farmer any toime." 

My way led me quickly out of the well- 
groomed and glittering main streets of the 
town. I passed first through several blocks 
of quiet residences, and then came to a 
street near the river which was garishly 
lighted, and crowded with small, poor shops 
and stores, with a saloon on nearly every 
corner. I passed a huge, dark, silent box 
of a mill, and I saw what I never saw before 
in a city, armed men guarding the streets. 

Although it was growing late — it was 
after nine o'clock — crowds of people were 
still parading the streets, and there was 
something intangibly restless, something tense, 
in the very atmosphere of the neighbourhood. 
It was very plain that I had reached the strike 
district. I was about to make some further 
inquiries for the headquarters of the mill 
men or for Bill Hahn personally, when I saw, 



276 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

not far ahead of me, a black crowd of people 
reaching out into the street. Drawing nearer 
I saw that an open space or block between 
two rows of houses was literally black with 
human beings, and in the centre on a raised 
platform, under a gasolene flare, I beheld my 
friend of the road, Bill Hahn. The overcoat 
and the hat with the furry ears had disap- 
peared, and the little man stood there, bare- 
headed, before that great audience. 

My experience in the v/orld is limited, 
but I have never heard anything like that 
speech for sheer power. It was as unruly 
and powerful and resistless as life itself. It 
was not like any other speech I ever heard, 
for it was no mere giving out by the orator 
of ideas and thoughts and feelings of his 
own. It seemed rather — how shall I de- 
scribe it.^ — as though the speaker was looking 
into the very hearts of that vast gathering 
of poor men and poor women and merely tell- 
ing them what they themselves felt, but could 
not tell. And I shall never forget the breath- 
less hush of the people or the quality of their 
responses to the orator's words. It was as 
though they said, "Yes, yes" — with a feeling 
of vast relief — "Yes, yes — at last our own 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 277 

hopes and fears and desires are being uttered— 
yes, yes." 

As for the orator himself, he held up one 
maimed hand and leaned over the edge of 
the platform, and his undistinguished face 
glowed with the white light of a great passion 
within. The man had utterly forgotten him- 
self. 

I confess, among those eager working 
people, clad in their poor garments, I con- 
fess I was profoundly moved. Faith is not 
so bounteous a commodity in this world 
that we can afford to treat even its unfamiliar 
manifestations with contempt. And when 
a movement is hot with life, when it stirs 
common men to their depths, look out! look 
out! 

Up to that time I had never known much 
of the practical workings of Socialism; and 
the main contention of its philosophy has 
never accorded wholly with my experience 
in life. 

But the Socialism of to-day is no mere 
intellectual abstraction — as it was, perhaps, 
in the days of Brook Farm. It is a mode of 
action. Men whose view of life is perfectly 
balanced rarely soil themselves with the 



278 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

dust of battle. The heat necessary to pro- 
duce social conflict (and social progress — 
who knows ?) is generated by a supreme faith 
that certain principles are universal in their 
application when in reality they are only local 
or temporary. 

Thus while one may not accept the philos- 
ophy of Socialism as a final explanation of 
human life, he may yet look upon Social- 
ism in action as a powerful method of stimu- 
lating human progress. The world has been 
lagging behind in its sense of brotherhood, 
and we now have the Socialists knit together 
in a fighting friendship as fierce and narrow 
in its motives as Calvinism, pricking us to 
reform, asking the cogent question: 

"Are we not all brothers?" 

Oh, we are going a long way with these 
Socialists, we are going to discover a new 
world of social relationships — and then, and 
then^ like a mighty wave, will flow in upon us 
a renewed and more wonderful sense of the 
worth of the individual human soul. A new 
individualism, bringing with it, perhaps, some 
faint realization of our dreams of a race of 
Supermen, lies just beyond! Its prophets, 
girded with rude garments and feeding upon 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 279 

the wild honey of poverty, are already crying 
in the wilderness. 

I think I could have remained there at the 
Socialist meeting all night long: there was 
something about it that brought a hard, dry 
twist to my throat. But after a time my 
friend Bill Hahn, evidently quite worn out, 
yielded his place to another and far less 
clairvoyant speaker, and the crowd, among 
whom I now discovered quite a number of 
policemen, began to thin out. 

I made my way forward and saw Bill 
Hahn and several other men just leaving the 
platform. I stepped up to him, but it was 
not until I called him by name (I knew how 
absent minded he was !) that he recognized me. 

"Well, well," he said; ''you. came after all!" 

He seized me by both arms and intro- 
duced me to several of his companions as 
"Brother Grayson." They all shook hands 
with me warmly. 

Although he was perspiring. Bill put on his 
overcoat and the old fur hat with the ears, 
and as he now took my arm I could feel one 
of his bulging pockets beating against my 
leg. I had not the slightest idea where 



28o THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

they were going, but Bill held me by the 
arm and presently we came, a block or so 
distant, to a dark, narrow stairway leading 
up from the street. I recall the stumbling 
sound of steps on the wooden boards, a 
laugh or two, the high voice of a woman 
asserting and denying. Feeling our way 
along the wall, we came to the top and went 
Into a long, low, rather dimly lighted room 
set about with tables and chairs — a sort 
of restaurant. A number of men and a 
few women had already gathered there. 
Among them my eyes instantly singled out 
a huge, rough-looking man who stood at the 
centre of an animated group. He had thick, 
shaggy hair, and one side of his face over 
the cheekbone was of a dull blue-black and 
raked and scarred, where it had been burned 
In a powder blast. He had been a miner. 
His gray eyes, which had a surprisingly 
youthful and even humorous expression, 
looked out from under coarse, thick, gray 
brows. A very remarkable face and figure 
he presented. I soon learned that he was 

R D , the leader of whom I had 

often heard, and heard no good thing. He 
was quite a different type from Bill Hahn: 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 281 

he was the man of authority, the organizer, 
the diplomat — as Bill was the prophet, 
preaching a holy war. 

How wonderful human nature is ! Only a 
short time before I had been thrilled by the 
intensity of the passion of the throng, but here 
the mood suddenly changed to one of friendly 
gayety. Fully a third of those present were 
women, some of them plainly from the mills 
and some of them curiously different — women 
from other walks in life who had thrown them- 
selves heart and soul into the strike. With- 
out ceremony but with much laughing and 
joking, they found their places around the 
tables. A cook who appeared in a dim door- 
way was greeted with a shout, to which he 
responded with a wide smile, waving the long 
spoon which he held in his hand. 

I shall not attempt to give any complete 
description of the gathering or of what 
they said or did. I think I could devote a 
dozen pages to the single man who was 
placed next to me. I was interested in him 
from the outset. The first thing that struck 
me about him was an air of neatness, even 
fastidiousness, about his person — though 
he wore no stiff collar, only a soft woollen 



282 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

shirt without a necktie. He had the long, 
sensitive, beautiful hands of an artist, but 
his face was thin and marked with the pallor 
peculiar to the indoor worker. I soon learned 
that he was a weaver in the mills, an English- 
man by birth, and we had not talked two 
minutes before I found that, while he had 
never had any education in the schools, he 
had been a gluttonous reader of books — 
all kinds of books — and, what is more, had 
thought about them and was ready with 
vigorous (and narrow) opinions about this 
author or that. And he knew more about 
economics and sociology, I firmly believe, 
than half the college professors. A truly 
remarkable man. 

It was an Italian restaurant, and I re- 
member how, in my hunger, I assailed 
the generous dishes of boiled meat and 
spaghetti. A red wine was served in large 
bottles which circulated rapidly around the 
table, and almost immediately the room 
began to fill with tobacco smoke. Every 
one seemed to be talking and laughing at 
once, in the liveliest spirit of good fellowship. 
They joked from table to table, and sometimes 
the whole room would quiet down while 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 283 

some one told a joke, which invariably wound 
up with a roar of laughter. 

"Why," I said, "these people have a 
whole life, a whole society, of their own!" 

In the midst of this jollity the clear voice 
of a girl rang out with the first lines of a 
song. Instantly the room was hushed: , 

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, 
Arise, ye wretched of the earth, 

For justice thunders condemnation 
A better world's in birth. 

These were the words she sang, and when 
the clear, sweet voice died down the whole 
company, as though by a common impulse, 
arose from their chairs, and joined in a great 
swelling chorus: 

It is the final conflict. 

Let each stand in his place, 
The Brotherhood of Man 
Shall be the human race. 

It was beyond belief, to me, the spirit 
with which these words were sung. In no 
sense with jollity — all that seemed to have 
been dropped when they came to their feet — 
but with an unmistakable fervour of faith. 
Some of the things I had thought and dreamed 
about secretly among the hills of my farm 



284 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

all these years, dreamed about as being some- 
thing far off and as unrealizable as the mil- 
lennium, were here being sung abroad with 
jaunty faith by these weavers of Kilburn, these 
weavers and workers whom I had schooled 
myself to regard with a sort of distant pity. 

Hardly had the company sat down again, 
with a renewal of the flow of jolly conversation 
when I heard a rapping on one of the tables. 

I saw the great form of R D 

slowly rising. 

"Brothers and sisters," he said, "a word 
of caution. The authorities will lose no 
chance of putting us in the wrong. Above 
all we must comport ourselves here and in 
the strike with great care. We are fighting 
a great battle, bigger than we are " 

At this instant the door from the dark 
hallway suddenly opened and a man in a 
policeman's uniform stepped in. There fell 
an instant's dead silence — an explosive 
silence. Every person there seemed to be 
petrified in the position in which his atten- 
tion was attracted. Every eye was fixed 
on the figure at the door. For an instant 
no one said a word; then I heard a woman's 
shrill voice, like a rifle-shot: 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 285 

"Assassin!" 

I cannot imagine what might have hap- 
pened next, for the feeling in the room, as in 
the city itself, was at the tensest, had not the 
leader suddenly brought the goblet which he 
held in his hand down with a bang upon the 
table. 

"As I was saying," he continued in a 
steady, clear voice, "we are fighting to- 
day the greatest of battles, and we cannot 
permit trivial incidents, or personal bitter- 
ness, or small persecutions, to turn us from 
the great work we have in hand. However 
our opponents may comport themselves, we 
must be calm, steady, sure, patient, for we 
know that our cause is just and will prevail." 

"You're right," shouted a voice back in 
the room. 

Instantly the tension relaxed, conversa- 
tion started again and every one turned 
away from the policeman at the door. In a 
few minutes, he disappeared without having 
said a word. 

There was no regular speaking, and about 
midnight the party began to break up. 
I leaned over and said to my friend Bill 
Hahn: 



286 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Can you find me a place to sleep to- 
night?" 

"Certainly I can," he said heartily. 

There was to be a brief conference of 
the leaders after the supper, and most of 
those present soon departed. I went down 
the long, dark stairway and out into the 
almost deserted street. Looking up between 
the buildings I could see the clear blue sky 
and the stars. And I walked slowly up and 
down awaiting my friend and trying, vainly, 
to calm my whirling emotions. 

He came at last and I went with him. 
That night I slept scarcely at all, but lay 
looking up into the darkness. And it seemed 
as though, as I lay there, listening, that I 
could hear the city moving in its restless 
sleep, and sighing as with heavy pain. All 
night long I lay there thinking. 



I GRAPPLE WITH THE CITY 





CHAPTER XI 
I GRAPPLE WITH THE CITY 



1HAVE laughed heartily many times since 
I came home to think of the Figure of 
Tragedy I felt myself that morning in the 
city of Kilburn. I had not slept well, had 
not slept at all, I think, and the experiences 
and emotions of the previous night still 
lay heavy upon me. Not before in many 
years had I felt such a depression of the 
spirits. 

It was all so different from the things I 
love! Not so much as a spear of grass or a 
leafy tree to comfort the eye, or a bird to 

289 



290 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

sing; no quiet hills, no sight of the sun 
coming up in the morning over dewy fields, 
no sound of cattle in the lane, no cheerful 
cackling of fowls, nor buzzing of bees! That 
morning, I remember, when I first went out 
into those squalid streets and saw every- 
where the evidences of poverty, dirt, and 
ignorance — and the sweet, clean country 
not two miles away — the thought of my 
own home among the hills (with Harriet 
there in the doorway) came upon me with 
incredible longing. 

"I must go home; I must go home!" 
I caught myself saying aloud. 

I remember how glad I was when I found 
that my friend Bill Hahn and other leaders 
of the strike were to be engaged in con- 
ferences during the forenoon, for I wanted 
to be alone, to try to get a few things straight- 
ened out in my mind. 

But I soon found that a city is a poor 
place for reflection or contemplation. It 
bombards one with an infinite variety of 
new impressions and new adventures; and 
I could not escape the impression made 
by crowded houses, and ill-smelling streets, 
and dirty sidewalks, and swarming human 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 291 

beings. For a time the burden of these 
things rested upon my breast like a leaden 
weight; they all seemed so utterly wrong to 
me, so unnecessary, so unjust! I sometimes 
think of religion as only a high sense of good 
order; and it seemed to me that morning as 
though the very existence of this disorderly 
mill district was a challenge to religion, 
and an offence to the Orderer of an Orderly 
Universe. I don't know how such condi- 
tions may affect other people, but for a time 
I felt a sharp sense of impatience — yes, 
anger — with it all. I had an impulse to 
take off my coat then and there and go 
at the job of setting things to rights. Oh, I 
never was more serious in my life: I was 
quite prepared to change the entire scheme 
of things to my way of thinking whether 
the people who lived there liked it or not. 
It seemed to me for a few glorious moments 
that I had only to tell them of the wonders 
in our country, the pleasant, quiet roads, the 
comfortable farmhouses, the fertile fields, 
and the wooded hills — and, poof! all this 
crowded poverty would dissolve and disap- 
pear, and they would all come to the country 
and be as happy as I was. 



292 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I remember how, once in my life, I wasted 
untold energy trying to make over my dear- 
est friends. There was Harriet, for example, 
dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to 
be fretted by the way she was forever trying 
to clip my wing feathers — I suppose to keep 
me close to the quiet and friendly and unad- 
venturous roost! We come by such a long, 
long road, sometimes, to the acceptance 
of our nearest friends ' for exactly what 
they are. Because we are so fond of them 
we try to make them over to suit some cu- 
rious ideal of perfection of our own — until 
one day we suddenly laugh aloud at our own 
absurdity (knowing that they are probably 
trying as hard to reconstruct us as we are 
to reconstruct them!) and thereafter we try 
no more to change them, we just love 'em 
and enjoy 'em! 

Some such psychological process went on 
in my consciousness that morning. As I 
walked briskly through the streets I began 
to look out more broadly around me. It was 
really a perfect spring morning, the air 
crisp, fresh, and sunny, and the streets full 
of life and activity. I looked into the faces 
of the people I met, and it began to strike 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 293 

me that most of them seemed oblivious of 
the fact that they should, by good rights, be 
looking downcast and dispirited. They had 
cheered their approval the night before when 
the speakers had told them how miser- 
able they were (even acknowledging that 
they were slaves), and yet here they were this 
morning looking positively good-humoured, 
cheerful, some of them even gay. I warrant if 
I had stepped up to one of them that morning 
and intimated that he was a slave he would 
have — well, I should have had serious trouble 
with him! There was a degree of sociability 
in those back streets, a visiting from window 
to window, gossipy gatherings in front area- 
ways, a sort of pavement domesticity, that 
I had never seen before. Being a lover myself 
of such friendly intercourse I could actually 
feel the human warmth of that neighbour- 
hood. 

A group of brightly clad girl strikers gath- 
ered on a corner were chatting and laughing, 
and children in plenty ran and shouted at their 
play in the street. I saw a group of them 
dancing merrily around an Italian hand-organ 
man who was filling the air with jolly music. 
I recall what a sinking sensation I had at 



294 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

the pit of my reformer's stomach when it sud- 
denly occurred to me that these people, 
some of them, anyway, might actually like 
this crowded, sociable neighbourhood! *'They 
might even hate the country," I exclaimed. 

It is surely one of the fundamental hu- 
mours of life to see absurdly serious little 
human beings (like D. G. for example) try- 
ing to stand in the place of the Almighty. 
We are so confoundedly infallible in our judg- 
ments, so sure of what is good for our neigh- 
bour, so eager to force upon him our par- 
ticular doctors or our particular remedies; 
we are so willing to put our childish fingers 
into the machinery of creation — and we howl 
so lustily when we get them pinched ! 

"Why!" I exclaimed, for it came to me 
like a new discovery, "it's exactly the same 
here as it is in the country! I haven't got 
to make over the universe: I've only got to 
do my own small job, and to look up often 
at the trees and the hills and the sky and 
be friendly with all men." 

I cannot express the sense of comfort, 
and of trust, which this reflection brought 
me. I recall stopping just then at the corner 
of a small green city square, for I had now 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 295 

reached the better part of the city, and of 
seeing with keen pleasure the green of the 
grass and the bright colour of a bed of flowers^ 
and two or three clean nursemaids with 
clean baby cabs, and a flock of pigeons 
pluming themselves near a stone fountain, 
and an old tired horse sleeping in the sun 
with his nose buried in a feed bag. 

"Why," I said, "all this, too, is beautiful!" 

So I continued my walk with quite a new 
feeling in my heart, prepared again for any 
adventure life might have to offer me. 

I supposed I knew no living soul in Kilburn 
but Bill the Socialist. What was my aston- 
ishment and pleasure, then, in one of the 
business streets to discover a familiar face 
and figure. A man was just stepping from an 
automobile to the sidewalk. For an instant, 
in that unusual environment, I could not 
place him, then I stepped up quickly and 
said: 

"Well, well. Friend Vedder." 

He looked around with astonishment at 
the man in the shabby clothes — but it w^as 
only for an instant. 

"David Grayson!" he exclaimed, "and 
how did you get into the city?" 



296 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Walked," I said. 

"But I thought you were an incurable 
and irreproachable countryman ! Why are you 
here?" 

"Love o' life," I said; "love o' life." 

"Where are you stopping?" 

I waved my hand. 

"Where the road leaves me," I said. 
"Last night I left my bag with some good 
friends I made in front of a livery stable 
and I spent the night in the mill district 
with a Socialist named Bill Hahn." 

" Bill Hahn ! " The effect upon Mr. Vedder 
was magical. 

"Why, yes," I said, "and a remarkable 
man he is, too." 

I discovered immediately that my friend 
was quite as much interested in the strike as 
Bill Hahn, but on the other side. He was, 
indeed, one of the directors of the greatest 
mill in Kilburn — the very one which I had 
seen the night before surrounded by armed 
sentinels. It was thrilling to me, this knowl- 
edge, for it seemed to plump me down at 
once in the middle of things — and soon, in- 
deed, brought me nearer to the brink of great 
events than ever I was before in all my days. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 297 

I could see that Mr. Vedder considered 
Bill Hahn as a sort of devouring monster, 
a wholly incendiary and dangerous person. 
So terrible, indeed, was the warning he gave 
me (considering me, I suppose an unsophisti- 
cated person) that I couldn't help laughing 
outright. 

" I assure you " he began, apparently 

much offended. 

But I interrupted him. 

"I'm sorry I laughed," I said, "but as 
you were talking about Bill Hahn, I couldn't 
help thinking of him as I first saw him." 
And I gave Mr. Vedder as lively a description 
as I could of the little man with his bulging 
coat tails, his furry ears, his odd round 
spectacles. He was greatly interested in 
what I said and began to ask many questions. 
I told him with all the earnestness I could com- 
mand of Bill's history and of his conversion 
to his present beliefs. I found that Mr. 
Vedder had known Robert Winter very well 
indeed, and was amazed at the incident which 
I narrated of Bill Hahn's attempt upon his 
life. 

I have always believed that if men could 
be made to understand one another they 



298 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

would necessarily be friendly, so I did my 
best to explain Bill Hahn to Mr. Vedder. 

"I'm tremendously interested in what you 
say," he said, "and we must have more talk 
about it." 

He told me that he had now to put in an 
appearance at his office, and wanted me 
to go with him; but upon my objection he 
pressed me to take luncheon with him a little 
later, an invitation which I accepted with 
real pleasure. 

"We haven't had a word about gardens," 
he said, "and there are no end of things that 
Mrs. Vedder and I found that we wanted to 
talk with you about after you had left us." 

"Well," I said, much delighted, "let's have 
a regular old-fashioned country talk." 

So we parted for the time being, and I 
set off in the highest spirits to see some- 
thing more of Kilburn. 

A city, after all, is a very wonderful 
place. One thing, I recall, impressed me 
powerfully that morning — the way in which 
every one was working, apparently without 
any common agreement or any common 
purpose, and yet with a high sort of under- 
standing. The first hearing of a difficult 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 299 

piece of music (to an uncultivated ear like 
mine) often yields nothing but a confused 
sense of unrelated motives, but later and 
deeper hearings reveal the harmony which 
ran so clear in the master's soul. 

Something of this sort happened to me 
in looking out upon the life of that great 
city of Kilburn. All about on the streets, 
in the buildings, under ground and above 
ground, men were walking, running, creeping, 
crawling, climbing, lifting, digging, driving, 
buying, selling, sweating, swearing, praying, 
loving, hating, struggling, failing, sinning, 
repenting — all working and living according 
to a vast harmony, which sometimes we can 
catch clearly and sometimes miss entirely. I 
think, that morning, for a time, I heard the 
true music of the spheres, the stars singing 
together. 

Mr. Vedder took me to a quiet restaurant 
where we had a snug alcove all to ourselves. 
I shall remember it always as one of the 
truly pleasant experiences of my pilgrimage. 

I could see that my friend was sorely 
troubled, that the strike rested heavy upon 
him, and so I led the conversation to the 
hills and the roads and the fields we both 



300 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

love so much. I plied him with a thousand 
questions about his garden. I told him in 
the liveliest way of my adventures after 
leaving his home, how I had telephoned him 
from the hills, how I had taken a swim in 
the mill-pond, and especially how I had lost 
myself in the old cowpasture, with an account 
of all my absurd and laughable adventures 
and emotions. 

Well, before we had finished our luncheon 
I had every line ironed from the brow of 
that poor plagued rich man, I had brought 
jolly crinkles to the corners of his eyes, 
and once or twice I had him chuckling down 
deep inside (where chuckles are truly effect- 
ive). Talk about cheering up the poor: I 
think the rich are usually far more in need 
of It! 

But I couldn't keep the conversation 
in these delightful channels. Evidently the 
strike and all that it meant lay heavy upon 
Mr. Vedder's consciousness, for he pushed 
back his coffee and began talking about it, 
almost In a tone of apology. He told me 
how kind he had tried to make the mill 
management In Its dealings with its men. 

"I would not speak of it save In explana- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 301 

tion of our true attitude of helpfulness; but 
we have really given our men many advan- 
tages" — and he told me of the reading-room 
the company had established, of the visiting 
nurse they had employed, and of several 
other excellent enterprises, which gave only 
another proof of what I knew already of Mr. 
Vedder's sincere kindness of heart. 

"But," he said, "we find they don't appre- 
ciate what we try to do for them." 

I laughed outright. 

"Why," I exclaimed, "you are having the 
same trouble I have had!" 

"How's that?" he inquired, I thought a 
little sharply. Men don't like to have their 
seriousness trifled with. 

"No longer ago than this morning," I 
said, "I had exactly that idea of giving them 
advantages; but I found that the difficulty 
lies not with the ability to give, but with the 
inability or unwillingness to take. You see 
I have a great deal of surplus wealth my- 
self '^ 

Mr. Vedder's eyes flickered up at me. 

"Yes," I said. "I've got immense accu- 
mulations of the wealth of the ages — ingots 
of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems 



302 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other 
superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my 
hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) 
"I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn 
and calves and cucumbers, and I've a bound- 
less domain of exceedingly valuable land- 
scapes. I am prepared to give bountifully 
of all these varied riches (for I shall still 
have plenty remaining), but the fact is that 
this generation of vipers doesn't appreciate 
what I am trying to do for them. I'm really 
getting frightened, lest they permit me to 
perish from undistributed riches!" 

Mr, Vedder was still smiling. 

"Oh," I said, warming up to my idea, 
"I'm a regular multimillionaire. I've got 
so much wealth that I'm afraid I shall not 
be as fortunate as jolly Andy Carnegie, for 
I don't see how I can possibly die poor!" 

"Why not found a university or so?" 
asked Mr. Vedder. 

"Well, I had thought of that. It's a 
good idea. Let's join our forces and establish 
a university where truly serious people can 
take courses in laughter." 

"Fine idea!" exclaimed Mr. Vedder; "but 
wouldn't it require an enormous endowment 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 303 

to accommodate all the applicants ? You must 
remember that this is a very benighted and 
illiterate world, laughingly speaking." 

"It is, indeed," I said, "but you must 
remember that many people, for a long 
time, will be too serious to apply. I wonder 
sometimes if any one ever learns to laugh — 
really laugh — much before he is forty." 

"But," said Mr. Vedder anxiously, "do 
you think such an institution would be 
accepted by the proletariat of the serious- 
minded?" 

"Ah, that's the trouble," said I, "that's 
the trouble. The proletariat doesn't ap- 
preciate what we are trying to do for them! 
They don't want your reading-rooms nor my 
Emerson and cucumbers. The seat of the 
difficulty seems to be that what seems wealth 
to us isn't necessarily wealth for the other 
fellow." 

I cannot tell with what delight we fenced 
our way through this foolery (which was not 
all foolery, either). I never met a man more 
quickly responsive than Mr. Vedder. But 
he now paused for some moments, evidently 
ruminating. 

"Well, David," he said seriously, "what 



304 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

are we going to do about this obstreperous 
other fellow ? " 

"Why not try the experiment," I suggested, 
"of giving him what he considers wealth, 
instead of what you consider wealth?" 

"But what does he consider wealth?" 

"Equality," said I. 

Mr. Vedder threw up his hands. 

" So you're a Socialist, too ! " 

"That," I said, "is another story." 

"Well, supposing we did or could give 
him this equality you speak of — what would 
become of us? What would we get out of 
it?" 

"Why, equality, too!" I said. 

Mr. Vedder threw up his hands with a 
gesture of mock resignation. 

"Come," said he, "let's get down out 
of Utopia!" 

We had some further good-humoured fenc- 
ing and then returned to the inevitable 
problem of the strike. While we were dis- 
cussing the meeting of the night before 
which, I learned, had been luridly reported 
in the morning papers, Mr. Vedder suddenly 
turned to me and asked earnestly: 

"Are you really a Socialist?" 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 305 

"Well," said I, "I'm sure of one thing. 
I'm not all Socialist. Bill Hahn believes 
with his whole soul (and his faith has made 
him a remarkable man) that if only another 
class of people — his class — could come into 
the control of material property, that all the 
ills that man is heir to would be speedily 
cured. But I wonder if when men own prop- 
erty collectively — as they are going to one 
of these days — they will quarrel and hate 
one another any less than they do now. 
It is not the ownership of material property 
that interests me so much as the independ- 
ence of it. When I started out from my farm 
on this pilgrimage it seemed to me the most 
blessed thing in the world to get away from 
property and possession." 

"What are you then, anyway?" asked 
Mr. Vedder, smiling. 

"Well, I've thought of a name I would 
like to have applied to me sometimes," 
I said. "You see I'm tremendously fond 
of this world exactly as it is now. Mr. 
Vedder, it's a wonderful and beautiful place! 
I've never seen a better one. I confess I 
could not possibly live in the rarefied atmos- 
phere of a final solution. I w^ant to live 



3o6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

right here and now for all I'm worth. The 
other day a man asked me what I thought 
was the best time of life. Why,' I answered 
without a thought, 'Now.' It has always 
seemed to me that if a man can't make a go of 
it, yes, and be happy at this moment, he 
can't be at the next moment. But most of 
all, it seems to me, I want to get close to 
people, to look into their hearts, and be 
friendly with them. Mr. Vedder, do you 
know what I'd like to be called?" 

"I cannot imagine," said he. 

"Well, I'd like to be called an Introducer. 
My friend, Mr. Blacksmith, let me introduce 
you to my friend, Mr. Plutocrat. I could 
almost swear that you were brothers, so 
near alike are you! You'll find each other 
wonderfully interesting once you get over 
the awkwardness of the introduction. And, 
Mr. White Man, let me present you partic- 
ularly to my good friend, Mr. Negro. You 
will see if you sit down to it that this curious 
colour of the face is only skin deep." 

"It's a good name!" said Mr. Vedder, 
laughing. 

"It's a wonderful name," said I, "and 
it's about the biggest and finest work in 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 307 

the world — to know human beings just 
as they are, and to make them acquainted 
with one another just as they are. Why, 
it's the foundation of all the democracy 
there is, or ever will be. Sometimes I think 
that friendliness is the only achievement 
of life worth while — and unfriendliness the 
only tragedy." 

I have since felt ashamed of myself when I 
thought how I lectured my unprotected 
host that day at luncheon; but it seemed 
to boil out of me irresistibly. The ex- 
periences of the past two days had stirred 
me to the very depths, and it seemed to me 
I must explain to somebody how it all im- 
pressed me — and to whom better than to 
my good friend Vedder? 

As we were leaving the table an idea flashed 
across my mind which seemed, at first, so 
wonderful that it quite turned me dizzy. 

"See here, Mr. Vedder," I exclaimed, 
"let me follow my occupation practically. 
I know Bill Hahn and I know you. Let 
me introduce you. If you could only get 
together, if you could only understand what 
good fellows you both are, it might go far 
toward solving these difficulties." 



3o8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

I had some trouble persuading him, but 
finally he consented, said he wanted to leave 
no stone unturned, and that he would meet 
Bill Hahn and some of the other leaders, if 
proper arrangements could be made. 

I left him, therefore, in excitement, feeling 
that I was at the point of playing a part 
in a very great event. "Once get these men 
together," I thought, "and they must come 
to an understanding." 

So I rushed out to the mill district, say- 
ing to myself over and over (I have smiled 
about it since!): "We'll settle this strike: 
we'll settle this strike: we'll settle this strike." 
After some searching I found my friend Bill 
in the little room over a saloon that served 
as strike headquarters. A dozen or more of 
the leaders were there, faintly distinguishable 
through clouds of tobacco smoke. Among 

them sat the great R D , his burly 

figure looming up at one end of the table, 
and his strong, rough, iron-jawed face turning 
first toward this speaker and then toward 
that. The discussion, which had evidently 
been lively, died down soon after I appeared at 
the door, and Bill Hahn came out to me and 
we sat down together In the adjoining room. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 309 

Here I broke eagerly into an account of the 
happenings of the day, described my chance 
meeting with Mr. Vedder — who was well 
known to Bill by reputation — and finally asked 
him squarely whether he would meet him. I 
think my enthusiasm quite carried him away. 

^'Sure, I will," said Bill Hahn heartily. . 

"When and where?" I asked, ''and will 
any of the other men join you ? " 

Bill was all enthusiasm at once, for that 
was the essence of his temperament, but he 
said that he must first refer it to the com- 
mittee. I waited, in a tense state of im- 
patience, for what seemed to me a very long 
time; but finally the door opened and Bill 

Hahn came out bringing R D 

himself with him. We all sat down together, 

and R D began to ask questions 

(he was evidently suspicious as to who and 
what I was); but I think, after I talked with 
them for some time that I made them see the 
possibilities and the importance of such 
a meeting. I was greatly impressed with 

R — D , the calmness and steadiness 

of the man, his evident shrewdness. "A 
real general," I said to myself. "I should 
like to know him better." 



3IO THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

After a long talk they returned to the 
other room, closing the door behind them, 
and I waited again, still more impatiently. 

It seems rather absurd now, but at that 
moment I felt firmly convinced that I was 
on the way to the permanent settlement of a 
struggle which had occupied the best brains 
of Kilburn for many weeks. 

While I was waiting in that dingy ante- 
room, the other door slowly opened and a 
boy stuck his head in. 

"Is David Grayson here.^" he asked. 

"Here he is," said I, greatly astonished 
that any one in Kilburn should be inquir- 
ing for me, or should know where I was. 

The boy came in, looked at me with jolly 
round eyes for a moment, and dug a letter 
out of his pocket. I opened it at once, and 
glancing at the signature discovered that it 
was from Mr. Vedder. 

"He said I'd probably find you at strike 
headquarters," remarked the boy. 

This was the letter: marked "Confidential." 

My Dear Grayson: I think you must be something of a 
hypnotist. After you left me I began to think of the proj- 
ect you mentioned, and I have talked it over with one or 
two of my associates. I would gladly hold this conference, 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 311 

but it does not now seem wise for us to do so. The in- 
terests we represent are too important to be jeopardized. 
In theory you are undoubtedly right, but in this case I 
think you will agree with me (when you think it over), we 
must not show any weakness. Come and stop with us 
to-night: Mrs. Vedder will be overjoyed to see you and 
we'll have another fine talk. 

I confess I was a good deal cast down cis 
I read this letter. 

*'What interests are so important.^" I asked 
myself, "that they should keep friends apart .^" 

But I was given only a moment for reflec- 
tion for the door opened and my friend Bill, 

together with R D and several 

other members of the committee, came out. 
I put the letter in my pocket, and for a mo- 
ment my brain never worked under higher 
pressure. What should I say to them now? 
How could I explain myself.^ 

Bill Hahn was evidently labouring under 

considerable excitement, but R D 

was as calm as a judge. He sat down in the 
chair opposite and said to me: 

"We've been figuring out this proposition 
of Mr. Vedder's. Your idea is all right, and 
it would be a fine thing if we could really 
get together as you suggest upon terms of 
common understanding and friendship." 



312 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Just what Mr. Vedder said, " I exclaimed. 

"Yes," he continued, "it's all right in 
theory; but in this case it simply won't work. 
Don't you see it's got to be war.^ Your 
friend and I could probably understand each 
other — but this is a class war. It's all or 
nothing with us, and your friend Vedder 
knows it as well as we do." 

After some further argument and explana- 
tion, I said: 

"I see: and this is Socialism." 

"Yes," said the great R D , "this 

is Socialism." 

"And it's force you would use," I said. 

"It's force they use," he replied. 

After I left the strike headquarters that 
evening — for it was almost dark before I 
parted with the committee — I walked straight 
out through the crowded streets, so absorbed 
in my thoughts that I did not know in the 
least where I was going. The street lights 
came out, the crowds began to thin away, I 
heard a strident song from a phonograph at 
the entrance to a picture show, and as I 
passed again in front of the great, dark, 
many-windowed mill which had made my 
friend Vedder a rich man I saw a sentinel 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 313 

turn slowly at the corner. The light glinted 
on the steel of his bayonet. He had a 
fresh, fine, boyish face. 

"We have some distance yet to go in 
this world," I said to myself, "no man need 
repine for lack of good work ahead." 

It was only a little way beyond this mill 
that an incident occurred which occupied 
probably not ten minutes of time, and yet 
I have thought about it since I came home 
as much as I have thought about any other 
incident of my pilgrimage. I have thought 
how I might have acted differently under the 
circumstances, how I could have said this 
or how I ought to have done that — all, of 
course, now to no purpose whatever. But 
I shall not attempt to tell what I ought 
to have done or said, but what I actually 
did do and say on the spur of the moment. 

It was in a narrow, dark street which 
opened off the brightly lighted main thorough- 
fare of that mill neighbourhood. A girl 
standing in the shadows between two build- 
ings said to me as I passed: 

"Good evening." 

I stopped instantly, it was such a pleasant, 
friendly voice. 



314 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Good evening," I said, lifting my hat 
and wondering that there should be any 
one here in this back street who knew 
me. 

"Where are you going?" she asked. 

I stepped over quickly toward her, hat 
in hand. She was a mere slip of a girl, 
rather comely, I thought, with small childish 
features and a half-timid, half-bold look in 
her eyes. I could not remember having seen 
her before. 

She smiled at me — and then I knew! 

Well, if some one had struck me a brutal 
blow in the face I could not have been more 
astonished. 

We know of things ! — and yet how little 
we know until they are presented to us 
in concrete form. Just such a little school 
girl as I have seen a thousand times in the 
country, the pathetic childish curve of the 
chin, a small rebellious curl hanging low on 
her temple. 

I could not say a word. The girl evidently 
saw in my face that something was the matter, 
for she turned and began to move quickly 
away. Such a wave of compassion (and 
anger, too) swept over me as I cannot well 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 315 

describe. I stepped after her and asked in a 
low voice : 

"Do you work in the mills?" 

"Yes, when there's work." 

"What is your name.^^" 

"Maggie " 

"Well, Maggie," I said, "let's be friends," 

She looked around at me curiously, ques- 
tioningly. 

"And friends," I said, "should know some- 
thing about each other. You see I am a farmer 
from the country. I used to live in a city 
myself, a good many years ago, but I got 
tired and sick and hopeless. There was so 
much that was wrong about it. I tried to 
keep the pace and could not. I wish I could 
tell you what the country has done for 
me." 

We were walking along slowly, side by 
side, the girl perfectly passive but glancing 
around at me from time to time with a 
wondering look. I don't know in the least 
now what prompted me to do it, but I began 
telling in a quiet, low voice — for, after all, 
she was only a child — I began telling her 
about our chickens at the farm and how 
Harriet had named them all, and one was 



3i6 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

Frances E. Willard, and one, a speckled 
one, was Martha Washington, and I told 
her of the curious antics of Martha Wash- 
ington and of the number of eggs she laid, 
and of the sweet new milk we had to 
drink, and the honey right out of our own 
hives, and of the things growing in the 
garden. 

Once she smiled a little, and once she 
looked around at me with a curious, timid, 
half-wistful expression in her eyes. 

"Maggie," I said, "I wish you could go 
to the country." 

"I wish to God I could," she replied. 

We walked for a moment in silence. My 
head was whirling with thoughts: again I 
had that feeling of helplessness, of inad- 
equacy, which I had felt so sharply on the 
previous evening. What could I do.f* 

When we reached the corner, I said : 

" Maggie, I will see you safely home." 

She laughed — a hard, bitter laugh. 

"Oh, I don't need any one to show me 
around these streets ! " 

"I will see you home," I said. 

So we walked quickly along the street to- 
gether. 




JVe were walking along slowly^ side hy side 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 317 

"Here it is," she said finally, pointing 
to a dark, mean-looking, one-story house, set 
in a dingy, barren areaway. 

"Well, good night, Maggie," I said, "and 
good luck to you." 

"Good night," she said faintly. 

When I had walked to the corner, I stopped 
and looked back. She was standing stock- 
still just where I had left her — a figure I 
shall never forget. 

I have hesitated about telling of a further 
strange thing that happened to me that 
night — but have decided at last to put it 
in. I did not accept Mr. Vedder's invitation: 
I could not; but I returned to the room in the 
tenement where I had spent the previous 
night with Bill Hahn the Socialist. It was 
a small, dark, noisy room, but I was so weary 
that I fell almost immediately into a heavy 
sleep. An hour or more later — I don't know 
how long indeed — I was suddenly awakened 
and found myself sitting bolt upright in bed. 
It was close and dark and warm there in 
the room, and from without came the muffled 
sounds of the city. For an instant I waited, 
rigid with expectancy. And then I heard 



3i8 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

as clearly and plainly as ever I heard any- 
thing: 

"David! David!" in my sister Harriet's 
voice. 

It was exactly the voice in which she has 
called me a thousand times. Without an 
instant's hesitation, I stepped out of bed 
and called out : 

"Fm coming, Harriet! I'm coming!" 

"What's the matter?" inquired Bill Hahn 
sleepily. 

"Nothing," I replied, and crept back into 
bed. 

It may have been the result of the strain 
and excitement of the previous two days. I 
don't explain it — I can only tell what 
happened. 

Before I went to sleep again I determined 
to start straight for home in the morning: 
and having decided, I turned over, drew a long, 
comfortable breath and did not stir again, I 
think, until long after the morning sun shone 
in at the window. 



THE RETURN 





CHAPTER XII 



THE RETURN 

^^ Everything divine runs with light feet J"* 

SURELY the chief deHght of going away 
from home is the joy of getting back again. 
I shall never forget that spring morning when 
I walked from the city of Kilburn into the 
open country — my bag on my back, a song 
in my throat, and the gray road stretching 
straight before me. I remember how eagerly 
I looked out across the fields and meadows 
and rested my eyes upon the distant hills. 

321 



322 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

How roomy it all was! I looked up into the 
clear blue of the sky. There was space here 
to breathe, and distances in which the spirit 
might spread its wings. As the old prophet 
says, it was a place where a man might be 
placed alone in the midst of the earth. 

I was strangely glad that morning of 
every little stream that ran under the bridges, 
I was glad of the trees I passed, glad of every 
bird and squirrel in the branches, glad of the 
cattle grazing in the fields, glad of the jolly 
boys I saw on their way to school with their 
dinner pails, glad of the bluff, red-faced 
teamster I met, and of the snug farmer who 
waved his hand at me and wished me a 
friendly good morning. It seemed to me 
that I liked every one I saw, and that every 
one liked me. 

So I walked onward that morning, nor ever 
have had such a sense of relief and escape, 
nor ever such a feeling of gayety. 

'^Here is where I belong," I said. ''This 
is my own country. Those hills are mine, 
and all the fields, and the trees and the sky — 
and the road here belongs to me as much as 
it does to any one." 

Coming presently to a small house near 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 323 

the side of the road, I saw a woman working 
with a trowel in her sunny garden. It was 
good to see her turn over the warm brown soil ; 
it was good to see the plump green rows 
of lettuce and the thin green rows of onions, 
and the nasturtiums and sweet peas; it was 
good — after so many days in that dese^rt 
of a city — to get a whiff of blossoming things. 
I stood for a moment looking quietly over 
the fence before the woman saw me. When 
at last she turned and looked up, I said: 

"Good morning." 

She paused, trowel in hand. 

"Good morning," she replied; "you look 
happy." 

I wasn't conscious that I was smiling out- 
wardly. 

"Well, I am," I said; "Fm going home." 

"Then you ought to be happy," said she. 

"And I'm glad to escape that,^'' and I pointed 
toward the city. 

"What.?" 

"Why, that old monster lying there in the 
valley." 

I could see that she was surprised and even 
a little alarmed. So I began intently to ad- 
mire her young cabbages and comment on the 



324 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

perfection of her geraniums. But I caught 
her eying me from time to time as I leaned 
there on the fence, and I knew that she would 
come back sooner or later to my remark about 
the monster. Having shocked your friend 
(not too unpleasantly), abide your time, and 
he will want to. be shocked again. So I was 
not at all surprised to hear her ask: 

"Have you travelled far?" 

"I should say so!" I replied. "I've been 
on a very long journey. I've seen many 
strange sights and met many wonderful 
people." 

"You may have been in California, then. 
I have a daughter in California." 

"No," said I, "I was never in California." 

"You've been a long time from home, you 
say?" 

"A very long time from home." 

"How long?" 

"Three weeks." 

"Three weeks! And how far did you say 
you had travelled?" 

"At the farthest point, I should say sixty 
miles from home." 

"But how can you say that in travelHng 
only sixty miles and being gone three weeks 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 325 

that you have seen so many strange places 
and people?" 

"Why," I exclaimed, "haven't you seen 
anything strange around here?" 

"Why, no " glancing quickly around 

her. 

"Well, I'm strange, am I not?" 

"Well " 

"And you're strange." 

She looked at me with the utmost amaze- 
ment. I could scarcely keep from laugh- 
ing. 

"I assure you," I said, "that if you travel 
a thousand miles you will find no one stranger 
than I am — or you are — nor anything more 

wonderful than all this " and I waved 

my hand. 

This time she looked really alarmed, glanc- 
ing quickly toward the house, so that I began 
to laugh. 

"Madam," I said, "good morning!" 

So I left her standing there by the fence 
looking after me, and I went on down the road. 

"Well," I said, "she'll have something 
new to talk about. It may add a month 
to her life. Was there ever such an amusing 
world!" 



326 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

About noon that day I had an adventure 
that I have to laugh over every time I think 
of it. It was unusual, too, as being almost 
the only incident of my journey which was 
of itself in the least thrilling or out of the 
ordinary. Why, this might have made an 
item in the country paper! 

For the first time on my trip I saw a man 
that I really felt like calling a tramp — a 
tramp in the generally accepted sense of the 
term. When I left home I imagined I should 
meet many tramps, and perhaps learn from 
them odd and curious things about life; but 
when I actually came into contact with the 
shabby men of the road, I began to be puzzled. 
What was a tramp, anyway.^ 

I found them all strangely different, each 
with his own distinctive history, and each 
accounting for himself as logically as I could 
for myself. And save for the fact that in 
none of them I met were the outward graces 
and virtues too prominently displayed, I have 
come back quite uncertain as to what a 
scientist might call type-characteristics. I 
had thought of following Emerson in his 
delightfully optimistic definition of a weed. 
A weed, he says, is a plant whose virtues 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 327 

have not been discovered. A tramp, then, 
is a man whose virtues have not been dis- 
covered. Or, I might follow my old friend 
the Professor (who dearly loves all growing 
things) in his even kindlier definition of a 
weed. He says that it is merely a plant mis- 
placed. The virility of this definition has 
often impressed me when I have tried to 
grub the excellent and useful horseradish 
plants out of my asparagus bed! Let it be 
then — a tramp is a misplaced man, whose 
virtues have not been discovered. 

Whether this is an adequate definition 
or not, it fitted admirably the man I overtook 
that morning on the road. He was certainly 
misplaced, and during my brief but exciting 
experience with him I discovered no virtues 
whatever. 

In one way he was quite different from 
the traditional tramp. He walked with far 
too lively a step, too jauntily, and he had 
with him a small, shaggy, nondescript dog, 
a dog as shabby as he, trotting close at his 
heels. He carried a light stick, which he 
occasionally twirled over in his hand. As 
I drew nearer I could hear him whistHng and 
even, from time to time, breaking into a lively 



./ 



328 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

bit of song. What a devil-may-care chap he 
seemed, anyway! I was greatly interested. 

When at length I drew alongside he did 
not seem in the least surprised. He turned, 
glanced at me with his bold black eyes, and 
broke out again into the song he was singing. 
And these were the words of his song — at 
least, all I can remember of them: 

Oh, I'm so fine and gay, 
I'm so fine and gay, 
I have to take a dog along, 
To kape the ga-irls away. 

What droll zest he put into it! He had 
a red nose, a globular red nose set on his 
face like an overgrown strawberry, and from 
under the worst derby hat in the world burst 
his thick curly hair. 

"Oh, I'm so fine and gay," he sang, step- 
ping to the rhythm of his song, and looking 
the very image of good-humoured impu- 
dence. I can't tell how amused and pleased 
I was — though if I had known what was to 
happen later I might not have been quite so 
friendly — yes, I would too ! 

We fell into conversation, and it wasn't 
long before I suggested that we stop for 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 329 

luncheon together somewhere along the road. 
He cast a quick appraising eye at my bag, and 
assented with alacrity. We climbed a fence 
and found a quiet spot near a little brook. 

I was much astonished to observe the 
resources of my jovial companion. Al- 
though he carried neither bag nor pack 
and appeared to have nothing whatever 
in his pockets, he proceeded, like a pro- 
fessional prestidigitator, to produce from 
his shabby clothing an extraordinary number 
of curious things — a black tin can with a 
wire handle, a small box of matches, a soiled 
package which I soon learned contained tea, 
a miraculously big dry sausage wrapped in an 
old newspaper, and a clasp-knife. I watched 
him with breathless interest. 

He cut a couple of crotched sticks to hang 
the pail on and in two or three minutes had 
a little fire, no larger than a man's hand, 
burning brightly under it. ("Big fires," said 
he wisely, "are not for us.") This he fed 
with dry twigs, and in a very few minutes he 
had a pot of tea from which he offered me 
the first drink. This, with my luncheon and 
part of his sausage, made up a very good 
meal. 



330 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

While we were eating, the little dog sat 
sedately by the fire. From time to time his 
master would say, "Speak, Jimmy." 

Jimmy would sit up on his haunches, his 
two front paws hanging limp, turn his head 
to one side in the drollest way imaginable 
and give a yelp. His master would toss 
him a bit of sausage or bread and he would 
catch it with a snap. 

"Fine dog!" commented my companion. 

"So he seems," said I. 

After the meal was over my companion 
proceeded to produce other surprises from 
his pockets — a bag of tobacco, a brier pipe 
(which he kindly offered to me and which 
I kindly refused), and a soiled packet of 
cigarette papers. Having rolled a cigar- 
ette with practised facility, he leaned up 
against a tree, took off his hat, lighted the 
cigarette and, having taken a long draw at 
it, blew the smoke before him with an in- 
credible air of satisfaction. 

"Solid comfort this here — hey!" he ex- 
claimed. 

We had some further talk, but for so 
jovial a specimen he was surprisingly un- 
communicative. Indeed, I think he soon 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 331 

decided that I somehow did not belong to the 
fraternity, that I was a "farmer" — In the 
most opprobrious sense — and he soon began 
to drowse, rousing himself once or twice to 
roll another cigarette, but finally dropping 
(apparently, at least) fast asleep. 

I was glad enoiigh of the rest and quiet 
after the strenuous experience of the last 
two days — and I, too, soon began to 
drowse. It didn't seem to me then that I 
lost consciousness at all, but I suppose I 
must have done so, for when I suddenly 
opened my eyes and sat up my companion 
had vanished. How he succeeded In gather- 
ing up his pail and packages so noiselessly 
and getting away so quickly is a mystery 
to me. 

"Well," I said, "that's odd." 

Rousing myself deliberately I put on my 
hat and was about to take up my bag when I 
suddenly discovered that It was open. My 
rain-cape was missing! It wasn't a very 
good rain-cape, but It was missing. 

At first I was Inclined to be angry, but 
when I thought of my jovial companion 
and the cunning way In which he had tricked 
me, I couldn't help laughing. At the same 



332 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

time I. jumped up quickly and ran down to 
the road. 

"I may get him yet," I said. 

Just as I stepped out of the woods I 
caught a glimpse of a man some hundreds 
of yards away, turning quickly from the 
main road into a lane or by-path. I wasn't 
altogether sure that he was my man, but I 
ran across the road and climbed the fence. 
I had formed the plan instantly of cutting 
across the field and so striking the by-road 
farther up the hill. I had a curious sense of 
amused exultation, the very spirit of the 
chase, and my mind dwelt with the liveliest 
excitement on what I should say or do if I 
really caught that jolly spark of impudence. 

So I came by way of a thicket along an 
old stone fence to the by-road, and there, 
sure enough, only a little way ahead of 
me, was my man with the shaggy little 
dog close at his heels. He was making 
pretty good time, but I skirted swiftly 
along the edge of the road until I had nearly 
overtaken him. Then I slowed down to a 
walk and stepped out into the middle of the 
road. I confess my heart was pounding at a 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 333 

lively rate. The next time he looked behind 
him — guiltily enough, too! — I said in the 
calmest voice I could command: 

"Well, brother, you almost left me be- 
hind." 

He stopped and I stepped up to him. 

I wish I could describe the look in his face 
— mingled astonishment, fear, and defiance. 

"My friend," I said, "I'm disappointed in 
you." 

He made no reply. 

"Yes, I'm disappointed. You did such a 
very poor job." 

"Poor job!" he exclaimed. 

"Yes," I said, and I slipped my bag off 
my shoulder and began to rummage inside. 
My companion watched me silently and sus- 
piciously. 

"You should not have left the rubbers." 

With that I handed him my old rubbers. 
A peculiar expression came into the man's 
face. 

"Say, pardner, what you drivin' at?" 

"Well," I said, "I don't Hke to see such 
evidences of haste and inefficiency." 

He stood staring at me helplessly, hold- 
ing my old rubbers at arm's length. 



334 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Come on now," I said, "that's over. 
We'll walk along together." 

I was about to take his arm, but quick 
as a flash he dodged, cast both rubbers and 
rain-cape away from him, and ran down the 
road for all he was worth, the little dog, look- 
ing exactly like a rolling ball of fur, pelting 
after him. He never once glanced back, but 
ran for his life. I stood there and laughed 
until the tears came, and ever since then, at 
the thought of the expression on the jolly 
rover's face when I gave him my rubbers, I've 
had to smile. I put the rain-cape and rubbers 
back into my bag and turned again to the 
road. 

Before the afternoon was nearly spent I 
found myself very tired, for my two days' ex- 
perience in the city had been more exhausting 
for me, I think, than a whole month of hard 
labour on my farm. I found haven with a 
friendly farmer, whom I joined while he was 
driving his cows in from the pasture. I helped 
him with his milking both that night and 
the next morning, and found his situation 
and family most interesting — but I shall 
not here enlarge upon that experience. 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 335 

It was late afternoon when I finally sur- 
mounted the hill from which I knew well 
enough I could catch the first glimpse of my 
farm. For a moment after I reached the 
top I could not raise my eyes, and when 
finally I was able to raise them I could not see. 

*'There is a spot in Arcady — a spot in 

Arcady — a spot in Arcady " So runs 

the old song. 

There is a spot in Arcady, and at the 
centre of it there is a weather-worn old 
house, and not far away a perfect oak tree, 
and green fields all about, and a pleasant 
stream fringed with alders in the little 
valley. And out of the chimney into the 
sweet, still evening air rises the slow white 
smoke of the supper-fire. 

I turned from the main road, and climbed 
the fence and walked across my upper field 
to the old wood lane. The air was heavy 
and sweet with clover blossoms, and along 
the fences I could see that the raspberry 
bushes were ripening their fruit. 

So I came down the lane and heard the 
comfortable grunting of pigs in the pasture 
lot and saw the calves licking one another 
as they stood at the gate. 



336 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"How they've grown!" I said. 

I stopped at the corner of the barn a 
moment. From within I heard the rattling 
of milk in a pail (a fine sound), and heard 
a man's voice saying: 

"Whoa, there! Stiddy now!" 

"Dick's milking," I said. 

So I stepped in at the doorway. 

"Lord, Mr. Grayson!" exclaimed Dick, ris- 
ing instantly and clasping my hand like a 
long-lost brother. 

"I'm glad to see you!" 

"I'm glad to see youP^ 

The warm smell of the new milk, the 
pleasant sound of animals stepping about 
in the stable, the old mare reaching her long 
head over the stanchion to welcome me, and 
nipping at my fingers when I rubbed her 
nose 

And there was the old house with the 
late sun upon it, the vines hanging green 
over the porch, Harriet's trim flower bed — 
I crept along quietly to the corner. The 
kitchen door stood open. 

"Well, Harriet!" I said, stepping in- 
side. 

"Mercy! David!" 




I 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 337 

I have rarely known Harriet to be in 
quite such a reckless mood. She kept think- 
ing of a new kind of sauce or jam for supper 
(I think there were seven, or were there 
twelve? on the table before I got through). 
And there was a new rhubarb pie such as only- 
Harriet can make, just brown enough on 
top, and not too brown, with just the right 
sort of hills and hummocks in the crust, and 
here and there little sugary bubbles where a 
suggestion of the goodness came through 

— such a pie ! and such an appetite to 

go with it! 

"Harriet," I said, "you're spoiling me. 
Haven't you heard how dangerous it is to 
set such a supper as this before a man who is 
perishing with hunger? Have you no mercy 
forme?" 

This remark produced the most extraordi- 
nary effect. Harrietwas at that moment stand- 
ing in the corner near the pump. Her shoul- 
ders suddenly began to shake convulsively. 

"She's so glad I'm home that she can't 
help laughing," I thought, which shows how 
penetrating I really am. 

She was crying. 

"Why, Harriet!" I exclaimed. 



338 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

"Hungry!" she burst out, **and j-joking 
about it!" 

I couldn't say a single word ; something — 
it must have been a piece of the rhubarb 
pie — stuck in my throat. So I sat there and 
watched her moving quietly about in that im- 
maculate kitchen. After a time I walked over 
to where she stood by the table and put my 
arm around her quickly. She half turned her 
head, in her quick, businesslike way. I noted 
how firm and clean and sweet her face was. 

"Harriet," I said, "you grow younger 
every year." 

No response. 

"Harriet," I said, "I haven't seen a single 
person anywhere on my journey that I like 
as much as I do you." 

The quick blood came up. 

"There — there — David ! " she said. 

So I stepped away. 

"And as for rhubarb pie, Harriet " 

When I first came to my farm years ago 
there were mornings when I woke up with 
the strong impression that I had just been 
hearing the most exquisite music. I don't 
know whether this is at all a common experi- 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 339 

ence, but in those days (and farther back in 
my early boyhood) I had it frequently. It 
did not seem exactly like music either, but 
was rather a sense of harmony, so wonderful, 
so pervasive that it cannot be described. 
I have not had it so often in recent years, 
but on the morning after I reached home 
it came to me as I awakened with a strange 
depth and sweetness. I lay for a moment 
there in my clean bed. The morning sun was 
up and coming in cheerfully through the 
vines at the window; a gentle breeze stirred 
the clean white curtains, and I could smell 
even there the odours of the garden. 

I wish I had room to tell, but I cannot, 
of all the crowded experiences of that day — 
the renewal of acquaintance with the fields, 
the cattle, the fowls, the bees, of my long 
talks with Harriet and Dick Sheridan, who 
had cared for my work while I was away; of 
the wonderful visit of the Scotch Preacher, 
of Horace's shrewd and whimsical comments 
upon the general absurdity of the head of the 
Grayson family — oh, of a thousand things — 
and how when I went into my study and took 
up the nearest book in my favourite case — 
it chanced to be "The Bible in Spain" — it 



340 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

opened of itself at one of my favourite pas- 
sages, the one beginning: 

"Mistos amande, I am content " 

So it's all over! It has been a great experi- 
ence; and it seems to me now that I have a 
firmer grip on life, and a firmer trust in 
that Power which orders the ages. In a 
book I read not long ago, called "A Modern 
Utopia," the writer provides in his imaginary 
perfect state of society a class of leaders 
known as Samurai. And, from time to 
time, it is the custom of these Samurai to 
cut themselves loose from the crowding 
world of men, and with packs on their backs 
go away alone to far places in the deserts or 
on Arctic ice caps. I am convinced that 
every man needs some such change as this, 
an opportunity to think things out, to get a 
new grip on life, and a new hold on God. But 
not for me the Arctic ice cap or the desert! 
I choose the Friendly Road — and all the com- 
mon people who travel in it or live along it — 
I choose even the busy city at the end of it. 

I assure you, friend, that it is a wonderful 
thing for a man to cast himself freely for a 
time upon the world, not knowing where his 



THE FRIENDLY ROAD 341 

next meal is coming from, nor where he is 
going to sleep for the night. It is a surprising 
readjuster of values. I paid my way, I 
think, throughout my pilgrimage; but I 
discovered that stamped metal is far from 
being the world's only true coin. As a 
matter of fact, there are many things that 
men prize more highly — because they are 
rarer and more precious. 

My friend, if you should chance your- 
self some day to follow the Friendly Road, 
you may catch a fleeting glimpse of a man 
in a rusty hat, carrying a gray bag, and 
sometimes humming a little song under his 
breath for the joy of being there. And it 
may actually happen, if you stop him, that 
he will take a tin whistle from his bag and 
play for you, "Money Musk," or "Old Dan 
Tucker," or he may produce a battered old 
volume of Montaigne from which he will 
read you a passage. If such an adventure 
should befall you, know that you have met 
Your friend, 

David Grayson. 

P. S. — Harriet bemoans most of all the 
unsolved mystery of the sign man. But 



342 THE FRIENDLY ROAD 

it doesn't bother me in the least. Fm 
glad now I never found him. The poet 
sings his song and goes his way. If we sought 
him out how horribly disappointed we might 
be! We might find him shaving, or eating 
sausage, or drinking a bottle of beer. We 
might find him shaggy and unkempt where 
we imagined him beautiful, weak where we 
thought him strong, dull where we thought 
him brilliant. Take then the vintage of his 
heart and let him go. As for me, Fm glad 
some mystery is left in this world. A thou- 
sand signs on my roadways are still as un- 
explainable, as mysterious, and as beguiling 
as this. And I can close my narrative with 
no better motto for tired spirits than that of 
the country roadside: 

REST • 





THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



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